On Tuesday Night, the NFL Competition Committee met via conference call to discuss the enforcement of the Roughing the Passer rule, and to no one’s surprise they elected to change nothing.  More specifically, they elected to not change the point of emphasis regarding the body weight rule, which has been on the books since 1985.   You can read the full statement below.

As promised in the statement, the NFL subsequently released an instructional video, showing examples of illegal and legal hits.  Anthony Barr’s hit on Rodgers is one of the examples used as an illegal hit.  Noticeably absent from the video, are the roughing the passer penalties given to Clay Matthews the past two weeks.  It could be because the NFL already stated that they were correctly called.  But nonetheless, considering the controversy surrounding them, it is interesting that they weren’t included and may be a concession that they aren’t the best examples of what behavior they are trying to curb.

You can see the video below.  The video is just over two minutes long and it feels like part parody.   The mere fact that they have to release such a video, indicates how inept their management of the situation has been.

While protecting the quarterbacks is something they will continue to try to do, they have clearly gone too far.  The Matthews hits weren’t even dangerous.  And neither were remotely late.   One was as the quarterback was throwing it in the other one the quarterback still had the ball.   The NFL would have been better off to state it will still be a point of emphasis but acknowledge they have gone too far, and make some adjustments from there.

Originally from Glidden Wisconsin, Jason Straetz is a lifelong Packers\' fan, who has lived in Maine for over 30 years. He is a writer for packerstalk.com. You can follow him on Twitter: @jsnstz