I have a question about the roughing the passer penalty against Green Bay. As I recall, their defense deflected the pass before the penalty occurred. Shouldn’t the deflection have negated the calling of the penalty, as it would for a roughing the kicker call, if the kick is blocked or at least touched?
Yeah...that seemed like a lame call to me. The defender was very close to the QB already, and the ball was headed up in the air, making the QB still part of the play.
Deflections only effect pass interference, not roughing the passer. I’ve never figured out why if you hit the ball on a kick they wave the roughing rule, I suppose they figure that once you get kicked in the gut/ face/ where ever (which is basically what happen when you block a kick) you deserve to be able to hit the guy back. But on passes it only matters if it gets intercepted, at which point the QB is now a defensive player and available to be “blocked” (as Warren Sapp has demonstrated many times).