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Old Mon Jan 22, 2007, 09:27am
Bob M. Bob M. is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Clinton Township, NJ
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BadNewsRef
I'm a disinterested party since I'm an Eagles fan and a basketball ref.

My question is the pass interference call when Ellis Hobbs was guarding Reggie Wayne in the left corner of the end zone in the 3rd quarter.

Is there a face-guarding element to Defensive PI? Hobbs clearly was not looking back at the ball. But he also did not touch Wayne at all nor did he put his hands directly in front of Wayne's face. Hobbs guessed right and flailed his arm at the right moment and the ball hit him in the back of his left arm.

thank you my football brethren.
REPLY: I don't think there's a non-contact face-guarding restriction in the NFL (someone correct me if I'm wrong) but there was some contact on the play and since Hobbs was not playing the ball and effectively "cut off" Wayne's path to the ball that was a little under thrown, the call was probably justified. The color commentator (Simms?) probably shouldn't have used that term in describing the action since most officials associate the word face-guarding with blocking the vision of the opponent.

And BoBo...I'm with you--nice job by Helverson on those calls. On the no-call, I'm assuming the deep wing threw the flag and Helverson came in with the additional information that made them pick it up. (Amazingly, it took the announcers a few replays in slo-mo before they saw that the receiver tripped himself. On the second, he conferred briefly with the deep wing to make sure they both saw the same thing.
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Last edited by Bob M.; Mon Jan 22, 2007 at 09:31am.
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