Questionable Call of the Week: The Catch, Fumble & Fine That Weren’t

Eagles rookie Kurt Coleman should consider himself lucky. That’s because he just avoided becoming the most recent NFL player to be fined for a helmet-to-helmet hit on a defenseless receiver. Coleman would have received the fine for the helmet-to-helmet hit that he laid on Colts receiver Austin Collie during a play in the second quarter of Sunday’s Eagles-Colts match. The play was ruled an incomplete pass, and the rookie safety was flagged for what the officials referred to as a helmet-to-helmet hit on a defenseless receiver, but the league has opted not to fine Coleman for the play even though it resulted in Austin Collie suffering a concussion and needing to be carted of the field on a stretcher. Hey, Goodell. What happened to all that tough talk about cracking down on helmet-to-helmet hits?

It appears that the NFL has hit as bump in the road on its quest to limit the occurrence of concussions and other head trauma. That bump is this: What if unnecessary helmet-to-helmet contact occurs between a defender and a receiver after the receiver has caught the pass and is no longer considered defenseless?

I don’t care how the officials explain their classification of the pass as incomplete; it wasn’t. Video replay clearly shows that Collie caught the pass in stride and touched the ground with both feet. Collie even appeared to protect the ball as he saw Eagles safety Quentin Mikell leaping at him to make the tackle. So I don’t know where these referees were getting their information, but Collie at that moment had possession of the catch and had become a runner in the open field.

That means two things: 1) that the pass was a completion, and 2) that the pass was subsequently fumbled when Collie dropped the ball after Coleman hit him helmet-to-helmet.

Right away, the officials probably realized the quandary in which they found themselves. Coleman’s helmet-to-helmet hit bore a striking resemblance to the kinds of hits for which the NFL has recently begun issuing fines and suspensions. But this hit was on a receiver that had made a catch and was no longer defenseless in the sense that the pass was incomplete. How were they supposed to handle this kind of situation?

Well, instead of flagging Coleman for 15 yards and ruling the play correctly, they opted to make up a song-and-dance about how Collie didn’t have both feet down when the contact was made despite what the replays showed. Thus, they could throw a flag and still use the “incomplete pass” caveat of the “defenseless receiver” clause as justification. And that’s all fine and dandy, except that it’s the wrong call.

What they should have done was rule the play a catch and fumble and still throw the flag for the helmet-to-helmet hit. The fumble would have been negated and the NFL could still follow through on its promise to crackdown on hard hits. They could do this because Collie turned with his back to Coleman and thus had no reasonable expectation of being hit by him because he never saw him coming. That seems perfectly in line with NFL rules on use of the helmet to me. And Coleman certainly could have extended his arms to wrap Collie up in a proper tackle instead of lowering his head to make contact (which, at least in my view, means he should be fined).

Harmful helmet-to-helmet hits occur in many different situations, and the NFL should educate its officials better on how to use their judgment in those situations. Because if they continue ruling on-field plays incorrectly to justify the enforcement of helmet-to-helmet rules, then this issue is going to get even dicier very quickly.