DANNY ONEIL

No reason for NFL to fine Seahawks’ Richard Sherman for playing until the whistle

Nov 10, 2016, 11:22 AM | Updated: 3:59 pm

Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman has reportedly been fined for this play on Bills kicker Dan Car...

Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman has reportedly been fined for this play on Bills kicker Dan Carpenter. (AP)

(AP)

There’s only one way that it is fair to fine Richard Sherman $9,000 for making contact with Bills kicker Dan Carpenter.

The fine is fair if – and only if – Bills kicker Dan Carpenter is also fined $9,000.

They did the exact same thing on the play: They continued to play up until the whistle.

Because that’s what Sherman did. He didn’t stop playing football before hearing a whistle, and because in the course of playing football he hit a kicker in a way that understandably made people cringe, the league has apparently decided to fine him $9,000, according to ProFootballTalk.com.

Sherman did exactly one thing wrong on the play: He jumped offsides. He jumped egregiously offsides (and yes, that word is ONLY to be used in cases of officiating malpractice), but that in and of itself doesn’t signal a stop to the play. In fact, officials are instructed to let the play continue unless a defender gains such an advantage by jumping offsides that he’s going to get a free shot at an opponent. Usually that’s the quarterback. In this case it was a kicker. There’s even a term for that: unabated. And like egregious, unabated is one of those words that’s almost never used except with regard to football officiating.

O’Neil: NFL’s reaction to officiating gaffe shows public perception is priority

And let’s be clear, Sherman was unabated coming off the edge, but what happened in the collision with Carpenter was not Sherman’s fault, but the on-field officials. They never whistled the play dead. They provided no instruction or indication Sherman should stop, so Sherman continued his attempt to stop the kick just as Carpenter continued his approach to the kick.

No whistle was blown until AFTER Sherman made contact with the ball.

At least that’s what referee Walt Coleman Anderson told the one pool reporter allowed to interview him after the game.

“We were shutting the play down,” Anderson said.

His boss – Dean Blandino – used the exact same terminology.

“The officials were in the process of shutting the play down,” Blandino said on the league’s TV network.

How exactly were they doing that? Because no one blew a whistle. Maybe they were thinking about it or maybe they realized they should have, but no one did the one thing that signals shutting down a play until AFTER Sherman touched the ball and collided with the kicker who was trying to boot it.

Essentially, Sherman is being fined for failing to realize the officials were ABOUT to blow the whistle. And if he’s going to be fined for that, well Carpenter should be fined, too, because he apparently didn’t realize it, either. Like Sherman, Carpenter continued to play football.

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No reason for NFL to fine Seahawks’ Richard Sherman for playing until the whistle