Giants' Jihad Ward sounds off on roughing the passer penalties
New York Giants linebacker Jihad Ward reacts after a defensive stop against the Chicago Bears during the fourth quarter on Oct. 2, 2022. Credit: AP/Seth Wenig
Jihad Ward unloaded so ferociously on a query about the way roughing the passer penalties have been called of late that if the question were a quarterback he might have been kicked out of the league.
“They’re taking that [expletive] too far, brother,” the Giants linebacker told Newsday on Wednesday. “This game is getting more soft. I feel like anybody in the NFL who they advertise they want to protect. They’re just trying to take our money at this point with all these little calls and stuff. I get it. You don’t want everybody to get hurt out there. One play can change a life so they try to prevent that. But I think it’s [expletive]. I don’t like it… . It’s just mind-blowing what happens.”
He was riled up, of course, over two recent penalties that were questionable at best and egregious to many observers. The first was a flag on Falcons defensive tackle Grady Jarrett who sacked Tom Brady in the fourth quarter of a Buccaneers win Sunday. On Monday night, Kansas City defensive tackle Chris Jones stripped the ball away from Las Vegas quarterback Derek Carr and had it in his hands when he came down on top of the quarterback. Even though it appeared Jones tried to brace himself with his one free arm, he was penalized.
Giants defensive lineman Dexter Lawrence said Jones’ play was one of the best he had ever seen a fellow defensive lineman make.
“And it didn’t count,” he said, guffawing. “That was crazy… It definitely [expletive] when guys are getting their sacks taken away in weird ways.”
“Why do we have to have certain techniques to sack a quarterback?” Ward asked. “It shouldn’t have to be like that. The goal is to get the man down by any means necessary. No horsecollars and no facemask and stuff, obviously. They’re just trying to make this thing more clean and more safe. This is a dangerous sport. This will forever be a dangerous sport. And they’re treating it like it’s the [expletive] NBA out here.”
While it may seem as if the league is being overly protective of quarterbacks, the NFL says there have been considerably fewer roughing the passer flags thrown through five weeks this season than last year. In 2021 there were 51 such penalties. So far this year there have been 28.
The ones that have been called have become increasingly visible, though, and increasingly bothersome to defenders and even some quarterbacks alike.
“There are certain situations it shouldn’t be called and it gets called, but it’s like anything in the league, man,” Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes said Tuesday on his weekly radio show. “There’s got to be a little bit of common sense along the lines of Chris Jones. He stripped the ball. I know some of his body weight lands on him, but he breaks the ground, and he was holding the ball in the other hand. So there’s only so much you can do as a defensive lineman to try to get off the quarterback whenever you have a clean shot on him.”
“I saw those couple of plays from this weekend and I think it’s a tough call for refs to make,” Giants quarterback Daniel Jones said. “It’s kind of a subjective, bang-bang play where they have to make a split-second decision, so I don’t know how they’ll look at it or change it or not. But I thought it was interesting.”
Lawrence, who leads the Giants with 3.0 sacks, said he won’t change his approach based on the recent spate of penalties.
“You just continue to play the game how you do it,” he said. “Continue to tackle and bring him to the ground however you can. You don’t want to start thinking too much and then they can break out of it so you just wrap them up and bring them to the ground just like normal and hope they don’t call the foul.”
A league source confirmed to Newsday that there is “no backing down on enforcing the rules that are in place to protect the health and safety of players, including quarterbacks who by rule are considered defenseless players when they are in a passing posture.”
Ward, though, believes that there are different standards for different players depending on their public status.
“I really feel like they just want to advertise certain quarterbacks out there,” he said. “If it wasn’t a superstar quarterback and he would have gotten hit with the same treatment [as Brady or Carr] they would have let that slide.”
Ultimately, Ward and others around the league are spending the week pondering the proper way to sack a quarterback without drawing a penalty or a fine.
“What do you do?” Ward asked in all sincerity, his ire finally abated. “What do you do?”
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
