Saints coach Sean Payton: Taunting is 'being over-officiated'

The taunting topic isn’t going away as the season grows older, and a former prominent competition committee member isn’t hiding his displeasure with the emphasis’s implementation.

Saints coach Sean Payton tackled the subject during an appearance on Thursday’s The Dan Patrick Show and was honest in his assessment.

“I think it’s being over-officiated,” Payton said, via The Dan Patrick Show producer Andrew Perloff. “I don’t think any of us who discussed it [on the competition committee] saw it going where it is now.”

Taunting calls have been rather prevalent in NFL games this season, coming as a result of a player’s celebration in the direction of an opponent. Verbal exchanges or gestures have often been the culprit, but in Week 9’s Monday night game between the Bears and Steelers, a player’s physical positioning — “posturing,” as SVP of officiating Perry Fewell described it — drew a game-altering flag.

Payton expounded Thursday on how officials’ lack of time spent working together prior to kickoff is affecting how penalties are called and games are decided.

“We’ve seen it happen each weekend with the officiating,” Payton said. “That’s the hardest thing to get past is when they’re not up to speed maybe. It happened to the Bears a week and a half ago.

“Those kinds of things can’t happen. I look at that more from an overall leadership perspective and training perspective. Those problems start at the top, not at the individual crew. Somehow we’ve got to reduce the variables.”

Payton was part of the competition committee for the last four-plus years, serving as part of a group responsible with bettering the game and the way it is officiated. The committee recommended emphasizing taunting calls ahead of the 2021 season, and since its implementation, the taunting emphasis has largely been supported by those in power across the NFL from front offices to the sidelines, including committee member and Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin.

Payton recently left the committee and confirmed his departure last week.

“It was the right time,” Payton said Nov. 12, via NOLA.com. “I’ll leave it at that without getting fined.”

Bears head coach Matt Nagy was asked Wednesday about the penalty’s prevalence in the NFL, which cost his team a chance to get the ball back after forcing a key fourth down while trailing the Steelers by three points in an eventual Week 9 loss.

“It’s an exciting game. It’s a game that’s very emotional, but there are times that some people are egregious with celebrating and it can be over the top,” Nagy said. “I think probably the biggest message is ‘let’s calm this down a little bit’ because people watch, and people want to see a little bit of respect and a little bit of doing things the right way.

“It doesn’t mean you can’t have fun, right? But there’s young kids out there right now that are watching games and what happens is you go to some of these sporting events and you might see some imitation going on that’s taking it over the top.

“I’m a firm believer in respect and just kids growing and watching, and we have a huge platform as leaders. I’m talking players and coaches. So let’s understand what the rules are, let’s do it the right way, let’s still have fun — these guys are still having fun and not taunting, you can still have a great time — but let’s stay within the rules when we do it. So that’s probably why.”

NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero reported last Sunday that members of the NFL’s officiating department who reviewed the Week 9 game acknowledged that referee Tony Corrente and his crew erred on at least three separate critical calls and non-calls that went against Nagy’s Bears.

Cassius Marsh was fined by the NFL for taunting vs. the Steelers, but the response to the call underscored how taunting has become a hot-button issue across the league this season. There’s a reason folks like Nagy and Payton are being asked about it on a near-weekly basis.

To this point, the NFL has remained steadfast in its use, with league figures like Fewell backing the decisions made by officials and maintaining the penalty as an important part of furthering the game.

Source: Read Full Article