Poor Devin Thomas

[MTK]

Originally Posted by BringBackJoeT

The fact that a particular hit is delivered with revenge in mind does not necessarily make it a dirty one. Regardless of motivation, a hit is either delivered within the confines of the rules or it is not. And, based on the exchanges on this thread, there seems to be some difference of opinion as to why the flag was thrown--was it thrown because Heyer's shot was to the head, or because it was delivered so far away from the ball? If the latter, then, as you say, it might ( and I stress "might") be flag-worthy, but it still calls for a clarification of the rules. If a play is still going on, and a hit is delivered to the front of the body of an opposing player, where is the line between "close enough to the play to be legitimate" and "too far away from the play to be legitimate"? The fact is that Heyer, an offensive lineman, threw the hit while his quarterback still had the ball behind the line of scrimmage. If it was clearly to the head, then fine, I'll accept the call. But the opinion from the Fox booth yesterday, and others on this thread, is that it was because it was simply too far away from the football. That, in my opinion, makes the call highly questionable.

I think the main reason it was called was due to the fact Portis and Dockett were having some words on previous plays, and the refs were probably aware that something was brewing. So given the fact that the refs were probably keeping an eye on the situation, it wasn't a wise move by Heyer.