Sunday Slam Poetry.
We'll be brief
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Jacksonville quarterback Trevor Lawrence is out for the rest of the season, and the guy who cleaned his clock got suspended for three games. Is it fair?
Well…Let’s attack the question from a different angle. What do you notice about the photo above?
If it looks to you like Lawrence is beginning his “you can’t hit me” slide a little late in the process, welcome to DebateTown USA, population us. As completely on board as we are with the idea of not cracking quarterbacks in the brainial region, the rules dedicated to achieving this goal could use a little cleaning up.
That’s not the same as blaming Trevor Lawrence, by the way. He didn’t do anything wrong. What he did do (this was last week) was go into his slide at the 11th hour and 59th minute of this play — which is exactly what the NFL’s rules allow. Functionally, once the QB starts his slide, whenever and wherever that occurs, he is off-limits.
QBs often take advantage of this rule to grab extra yards. Especially on designed “scrambles,” they’ll charge forward several steps into the concussion danger zone before beginning their slide, knowing that defenders are afraid of getting flagged (or worse) for hitting them — at all, really.
In this particular case, Houston’s Azeez Al-Shaair was already in launch mode when Lawrence started to go down, which suggests that Lawrence probably mis-timed his slide. Again, that’s not a penalty on the QB, but it’s also not a great way to play in the NFL.
Al-Shaair ultimately was suspended three games, in part because it looks like he led with a forearm…
…and in part because Al-Shaair’s career includes multiple offenses — like, more than a dozen — for personal fouls and sportsmanship violations. In other words, he was an easy guy for the NFL to come down upon.
None of that fixes the rule issue, which is incredibly difficult to solve if the objective is to keep quarterbacks upright. If you abolish the slide rule, QBs are once again open game, and pro football is just too fast for them these days.
But as the rule stands, quarterbacks are fairly tempted to keep pushing for those few extra yards, which will put them in situations like this one again and again. Defenders are supposed to blast open-field runners, right? Something to watch for today as you see QBs once again go into the last-gasp slipdown.
That's a tricky spot for Al-Shaair, who is trying to make a living just like Lawrence. On that play, Al-Shaair needed to anticipate Lawrence's slide for the rule to work. He might have avoided putting his forearm in Lawrence's grill.
Maybe the onus should be on QBs to begin their slides at a reasonable point, whatever that is.
Thinking outside the box, the QB could make his body go completely limp, as if he'd just suffered a John McSherry on the field, and that would be the point at which he could no longer be touched.
I spring for a skirt for Mr. Lawrence!