Anyone who watched Detroit’s Week 1 win over the Kansas City Chiefs witnessed Chiefs RT Jawaan Taylor obviously breaking rules on nearly every snap. Well, everyone except the NFL game officials inside Arrowhead Stadium.
In an effort to raise awareness of the multiple rules Taylor was in violation of against Detroit, the NFL has included clips and instructions of his illegal alignment, failure to properly come to a set position, and early jump on the snap in this week’s training tape. The league distributes these to officials, as well as all teams, weekly to help clean up issues.
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Former NFL Director of Officiating Dean Blandino, among many others, called out the officials for missing the repeated Taylor violations. Now a television analyst on rules and officiating, Blandino pointed out that the NFL is using the injustices against the Lions from Week 1 in this week’s training tape.
Blandino revealed the info via Matt Verderame of SI,
“On the tape this week at the very end, there are several examples of—and a couple from the Thursday night game with Jawaan Taylor—of tackles who are too far back. … That was emphasized on the training tape going into Week 2,” Blandino said. “I would expect, just from my experience, officials watch that training tape. It’s usually a very good learning tool, and it’s good for giving your officials direction. I would expect we will not see the egregious examples we may have seen in Week 1.”
Lions fans have seen and heard this before, of course. One that immediately comes to mind is the emphasis on illegal batting of the ball from a prior meeting with the Seattle Seahawks, who got away with the egregious infraction en route to a win. Here’s hoping the officials are dialed into the rule book on Sunday in Ford Field.