Kyle Orton calling for flags?

Actually, I think that in both cases the flag was thrown before Orton even got off the ground. You see a lot of quarterbacks today waving their arms for flags, the same way you see a lot of quarterbacks today with cheat sheets on their arms, but it’s not really a case of the quarterbacks whining and getting what they want.

It’s a case of the referees being so fearful of the NFL’s “protect the QB” policies that they throw flags at non-hits without hesitation. Without even waiting for the QB to hit the ground first.

It’s not a quarterback problem. It’s a reffing problem. And, ultimately, a philosophical problem with the way the league has been run for the last decade and a half.

I think there may be some interesting room for discussion if we take a second-level look at the problem, which is why I’m leaving it up. The OP is specifically concerned with Kyle Orton’s theatrics on two specific plays, but there are much deeper issues embedded between the lines. You could easily replace Orton with Tom Brady and have the same post. Or a dozen other quarterbacks across the league.

Why have the quarterback post-sack theatrics become such a problem over the last 15 years? I’d be interested to see what comes of the discussion if people focus on this, or other similar second-level ideas that are entrenched between the lines of the OP.

But if it just turns into nothing but people calling Orton names, I might change my mind about all that….

He threw the ball finished his follow through then he got hit and no flag.

Big names like Manning and Brady get calls if so much as a finger brushes against them. It will eventually get bad enough that the league would have to do something.

You’re dead right about that—the big name QBs will get the flags called far oftener than the QBs that nobody cares about.

The biggest problem with the officiating is that they’re not all on the same page as to what’s a penalty. It changes week to week based on the crew. There are a couple of things that the league can do to fix this.

1.) Get the officials together every week to review a select game. Each official marks down when they would throw a flag based on what they see. This is called calibrating and the more often they do it the closer they’ll get. Some variation will always happen, but they can get it to within 10%

2.) I’d also make the NFL refs a full-time position—right now these guys just do it part-time, so there’s not really an off-season training program. If the league shelled out a few million a year more they could hire all these guys full-time and then have them do nothing but watch film in the off-season to make sure they’re all on the same page when it comes to calling a penalty.

I’m not even sure if the refs do a conference call during the week to talk about plays or not—that’s the most basic thing they could do, and I doubt they even do that.