fought through a jam with a shove<\/a>. And that, according to referee Brad Allen, was enough to draw a flag.<\/p>\nSaid referee Brad Allen to pool reporter Greg Auman after the game: \u201cThe covering official saw that the receiver created separation more than one yard downfield, which by rule is illegal and is offensive pass interference.\u201d<\/p>\n
Is it though? We checked the rule book. The ball was not in the air. Before the ball is in the air, an offensive player can\u2019t block more than a yard downfield. Does anyone really think McMillan was making a block?<\/p>\n
He was trying to fight off a jam. Really, what\u2019s a receiver supposed to do when he\u2019s legally chucked within the five-yard window? Take it? <\/p>\n
The defender pushes the player. The player can\u2019t push back?<\/p>\n
Maybe there\u2019s some esoteric explanation in the \u201cApproved Rulings\u201d or other such interpretive documentation. Or maybe it\u2019s one of those situations where the rules say one thing but the officials apply it differently. Still, as it relates to the pass interference rule as spelled out in the official 2025 rulebook (Rule 8, Section 5, Article 4), the only prohibited act by the offense before the ball is in the air is \u201cblocking\u201d more than one yard beyond the line of scrimmage. Which is a rule that we usually once see applied when the offense is running a pick play.<\/p>\n
So that\u2019s the bottom line. The official who flipped 42 yards of field position (erasing the 32-yard catch and adding a 10-yard penalty for the Panthers) determined that McMillan wasn\u2019t fending off an effort to disrupt his route but \u201cblocking.\u201d<\/p>\n
If that\u2019s truly the rule, we\u2019ve got a feeling it rarely gets applied the way it was applied to McMillan.<\/p>\n
Either way, we can\u2019t wait to see what Walt Anderson has to say about this, in his usual two-minute cameo during a 240-minute pregame show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the third quarter of Saturday\u2019s Panthers-Bucs game, Carolina receiver Tetairoa McMillan caught a 32-yard pass on third…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":492170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[1232,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-492169","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-nfl","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115837902786515552","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}