From beginning to end, Taurean Nixon did everything exactly right. Technically and fundamentally, the Rams defensive back carried out his orders perfectly as he tracked Raiders tight end Marcus Baugh across the field, closed in on him upon the ball coming his way and then lowered his body while diligently moving his head out of the way to make sure it was his shoulders, not his helmet, that hit Baugh first and prevented a completion on third down.
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It was, as coaches like to say, textbook football.
And presumably it was everything the NFL is seeking from defensive players as the league tries to take the head and neck out of the equation as much as possible by enforcing a new rule designed to ensure shoulders initiate contact rather than the head.
“From the actual feel of it, knowing I did everything I was supposed to do leading with my shoulder to make the tackle, I got up celebrating,” Nixon said.
And rightfully so. The play Nixon made should have satisfied everyone from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to Rams head coach Sean McVay to every single referee on the field at the Coliseum on Saturday to every single mother and father worried about letting their kids play football.
Hell, anyone with any stake at all in football, and the NFL still being around over the next 30 years, should have been celebrating. We all want football to be as safe as possible. For this generation and the ones to follow. And the new lowering-the-helmet rule, which is crystal clear in definition, is designed to do just that.
As an NFL team executive told The Athletic on Monday: “Anyone that thinks there is confusion over the helmet rule is lazy. There is no confusion at all. When a player lowers his helmet and initiates contact with his head to any part of the body, it is a foul. If you keep your head up and see what you hit, it is not a foul.”
The team exec took it a step further. “It is for player safety and good for the short-term and long-term health of the game,” he added. “I don’t know how you go back and change the rule to make contact more dangerous. Especially this day and age.”
And he is 100 percent correct. The NFL — and football in general — has an injury problem, specifically to the head and brain. In order to make the game safer and ensure it remains relevant moving forward, new rules need to be in place and enforced, and the players need to make the necessary adjustments. It is, after all, the players that the rules are protecting.
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Nixon, like so many other NFL players, understands that and has adapted his play and technique accordingly. He appreciates the intent of the rule and has made the necessary adjustments to do the right thing.
Just as he did on Saturday.
“I thought I did everything correctly,” Nixon said.
But someone saw the whole thing differently. Behind Nixon lay two yellow flags signifying a penalty.
“I’m thinking, ‘What happened? What’s up?’ ” Nixon recalled.
There is some debate on what the actual call was, but the referee’s on-field announcement and the official stats indicated the infraction was Nixon lowering his head to initiate contact. The Raiders were awarded 15 yards and an automatic first down. Rather than punting, they had a fresh set of downs. They eventually cashed in with a touchdown.
Nixon, more than a little bit confused and pissed off, eventually retreated to the Rams sideline where Window Surface computers are available for players to immediately review plays. Just as he suspected upon taking another look, he did everything he has been instructed to do by coaches to protect himself from injury and prevent his team from a costly penalty and his opponent from unnecessary harm.
“My coaches and I, we deemed it a good tackle,” Nixon said.
And if confronted with the same exact situation down the road?
“I’m not going to lie. I’m going to do it exactly the same,” he said.
Nixcon paused for a couple of seconds, forced a smile and said: “Hopefully whoever the line judge or back judge is that makes that call will look at it correctly.”
He didn’t have the heart to even contemplate the obvious next question.
But what if they don’t get it correctly? So far in the preseason, the NFL’s noble, albeit flawed, attempt to make football safer has led to penalty flags being thrown everywhere. Frankly, the bad calls on perfectly executed plays have left players and coaches wondering what they’re supposed to do to stay on the right side of the law.
“We try to coach our players the best we can to do everything to avoid keeping their head out of the tackle, following and abiding by the rules,” said McVay, whose Rams have been called for three lowering-the-head penalties that, upon further review, looked like completely clean hits.
The NFL did the right thing in adding the new rule last March. Taking the head out of the tackle will absolutely decrease injuries. It might even save lives.
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But the league fell woefully short in thinking this kind of call — with world-class athletes flying furiously around a football field at speeds most humans can’t even fathom — can be correctly administered and interpreted by officials in real time.
In their earnest effort to make the game safer, the NFL completely ignored the integrity of it.
Because as sure as Todd Gurley will break a long touchdown run this year, the outcome of a game will be affected by referees trying to size up, interpret and correctly enforce a rule in which incredibly fast and agile athletes are operating at speeds and force and velocity that human eyes are simply not capable of adequately monitoring.
“It’s those types of plays that the change of the target at the last second with how fast things occur,” McVay mused.
The fix is an easy one, albeit complicated. And maybe costly. But it needs to be done.
The NFL needs to take it a step further and make it an automatically reviewable call. Every time a lowering-the-head penalty is called, it needs to be reviewed in New York by replay officials.
Making the game safer is noble. Ensuring the integrity of the game remains intact is a close second.
Or, as Nixon put it: “These receivers may be going down, and if you begin to initiate contact on a receiver at a certain level and then by the time the contact actually happens he’s at another level, that should be looked at. We’re leaving our feet as defenders before the receiver is down or before his head is in a certain position.”
Replay might not make that clear every single time. But it should absolutely provide proper clarity most of the time.
Using replay to reinforce the new rule was actually broached at the NFL owners meetings last March, according to the NFL team executive. There was an understanding the owners were asking the impossible from referees. As a result, there were concerns the games might be adversely affected.
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“They are high-speed collisions that are hard to see at live speed all the time,” the team exec said. “And the penalty is a major one, especially if on third down.”
But the conversation at the owners meetings quickly turned to the pace of the game and how much time would be spent reviewing calls rather than moving the game along. Pace and length of game won out.
“So it went nowhere,” the team exec said.
What a shame. What a mistake.
And what a burden to put on referees and players.
“It’s where, just to the human eye something might look different and then to not have the ability to replay that when in fact there’s a lot that you may say, ‘OK, we saw it right, or we maybe saw it differently and now we’ll take that 15-yard penalty back,’ ” McVay said. “That might be the difference in somebody extending the drive that ends up leading to the one-possession difference in winning and losing a game.
“I think in terms of just the accuracy, absolutely [I’m] an advocate [of using replay],” McVay added. “I also do have a respect and understanding for the pace of play and why you want to get the game going for a lot of different things for the fans and stuff like that. But ultimately I think we want to make sure we’re not doing anything that disrupts the integrity of what exactly happens and how that can alter the end of the game.”
Top photo of Marcus Baugh (83), Nate Holley (42), Isaiah Johnson (27) and Taurean Nixon (27) by Chris Williams/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images