Exactly.

BTW, it has been reported on ESPN that they Steelers player will not be fined for the hit on McGahee.

It is clear that the NFL feels that the hit was legal and nothing malicious. It must be noted that the NFL fines players all the time for hits not penalized.

Peace

I have to admit when I saw the play at my mother-in-law's house, I assumed a fine would be coming even though the officials "missed" it. Apparently, my brother-in-law was right. :)

First off, Bisonlj - great summary. Covered all the points, was polite and informative.

Second - the second video link that was posted to show that the defender is a 'headhunter' and got flagged on the other play. In the other play, the reciever was no where near the ball and was starting to pull up and look around for where the ball had been thrown. A 'defenseless player' as opposed to the play in this topic where the player had the ball and could reasonably expect a contact.

Third - Everyone here has talked about leading with the helmet and it being a foul. It is my experience that LEADING with the helmet is a lot different than contact with the helmet during the tackle. Question: Who here would classify this contact as leading with the helmet at all?
To me it looked like he was trying to hit tha ball carrier with the shoulder, and their heads got in the way. Look at video where spearing is called and you will usually (please note the qualifier) see a different type of tackle motion.


On a personal note, I hate having plays like this, and always second guess myself afterwards if I didn't throw a flag. Most of the time I feel I was right not to (when I don't throw one), but it is SO hard to see and process these in the time we have on the field.

Personally, I dislike the term "leading with the helmet" because it implies illegality due to the helmet strinking first. Nowhere in any rule book I have seen (Canadian and NAFL at least) does the term "leading" appear and this is because given the position of the head on the body and given that the helmet can legally be involved in contact, it will invariably strike first in many cases and this first striking is not in and of itself illegal.

What is illegal is using the helmet as the primary force of contact so that the contact becomes a ramming action ("butt, spear and ram" do appear in rulebooks).

So long as players tackle by moving forward and bending their bodies, the head (and consequantly the helmet) will lead the way!

When the "Helmet Contacts" (Butt blocking, Face tackling, Spearing) were originally declared as illegal there was a clear and definite reference to the intention and motivation of the player delivering the blow. At the very beginning with "Spearing" I seem to recall the allegation of "punishing the opponent" was included in the definition. Face Tackling and Butt Blocking were terms evolving from expansion and refinement of the original problem called "Spearing".

At that time the rumor was that an alternate approach, of simply removing the facemask, received serious consideration as a means of persuading players to stop using the helmet as a weapon should the "Spearing" prohibition fail to accomplish the objective.

As suggested above, head to head contact in the game is inevitable, simply due to the nature of the game and it's inherent collisions. Unfortunately, head to head collisions are not always predictable, consistent or intentional and really can't be covered adequately by a blanket description.

As no two collisions are exactly alike the final determining factor, as is so often the case, boils down to the judgment of the covering official and what he concluded, based on what he observed.

What coaches called spearing was what the rules later called butt blocking, while what the rules called spearing was basically just a way to recognize a form of piling on or UR that could've been flagged previously. Both were with the top of the helmet, and the blocking technique originated before face bars, so it's not clear that abolishing face masks would've been effective. However, face tackling could be met with poke-in-the-eye, so removing the fask mask would undoubtedly have worked there.

Seems now they're trying to achieve the same effect on the solar plexus with hand blocking that they had previously with spearing. The coaches even refer to it as punching, although it's delivered with an open hand.

Robert

Unfortunately, the problem often lies within the very nature of the beast. With most rules, as soon as the rule is written creative minds focus on finding exactly what the very edge of legality permits, and where that line is drawn.

I recall, with the original "Spearing" rule there was such an intense effort to reduce the type of catostrophic injury, the suggestion that removal of all face masks even being considered as an alternative solution was intended to underscore the seriousness of the problem and the commitment to solve it.

The inference was that removing face masks, although parhaps not directly addressing contacts with the top of the head, would absolutely cause most players to reconsider leading with any part of the head, with the face unprotected.

There was a time, before facemasks, where football players were recognized by the number of directions the bridge of their nose turned in, which is doubtfully a period today's players would want to revisit.