1a. It’s every coach’s worst nightmare*: Player A accuses Player B of being smelly. The next thing you know, Player B retaliates by gouging out Player A’s eyes and exploding one of his testicles.
I truly understand the motivation behind the early-season crackdown on taunting. It’s less “think about the children” and more trying to avoid a calibrated needling that will draw a flag-worthy retaliation. Or sparking the cheapshot and/or the brawl. But the problem—as is the problem with most personal fouls—is that the consequences are disproportionate, and the flags ultimately reward a team that did nothing to actually earn it.
Football has evolved more than any other over the past half century, the administration of penalties hasn’t moved to reflect it. Penalties that happen during play are often the result of a player outperforming an opponent (an offensive lineman holds because the pass rusher beat him, a defensive back interferes with a pass-catcher because he’s beat on the play, etc.). And they almost always provide some kind of advantage for the offending team (a blitzer crosses into a neutral zone and gains a step on a blocker, an illegal man downfield fools the defense into thinking an RPO was actually a run play, etc.). There’s even an advantage to a violation like roughing the passer, in that you’re giving the opposing quarterback something to think about as the game goes on. But personal fouls after the play, including taunting, don’t have any affect on the play that just transpired, or provide any advantage going forward, and the punishments are absurdly severe.
The problem is a continuing insistence that the first-down marker can’t be moved, as if it was written in the Dead Sea Scrolls and can never be altered. Last season, there were an average of 43 first downs per game. To give a free one, or to push an offense so far back that one becomes out of reach, is a disproportionate consequence for any penalty, especially one as silly to administrate as a “taunt.”
So let’s fix this in a way that will please everyone the world over. The most obvious adjustment is to make taunting a 5-yard penalty, rather than pretending it will, say, take A.J. Brown years of intensive therapy to heal the psychological scars left by the time a defensive back signaled incomplete while looking in his general direction.
But, also—and more importantly—move the sticks. Instead of awarding a first down to an offense because one of their players was subjected to a mild taunt, give them five yards of field position but move the first-down marker five yards with it. So if they were set up with a third-and-4 from their own 21, move them up to the 26, but move the line to gain from the 25 to the 30, keeping it a third-and-4 situation. Occasionally it will be the difference between field-goal range and not, but usually it won’t be. And that’s enough justice to soothe a world-class athlete’s not-very-hurt feelings.
Plus, don’t discount the fact that the offending party must forever live with the immeasurable shame of knowing he once spun a football within an eight-yard radius of an opponent.
1b. The other solution is to go back to not calling it because it wasn’t a problem in the first place.
