Penalties are killing the Tar Heels and it’s not all their fault.
Every ACC football program sends tape of disputed, or uncalled, penalties to the conference office on Monday morning after games, and they get a report back that Mack Brown says would blow your mind.
“I have to be careful when I talk about officiating,” Brown said Monday, addressing the flags thrown against his team and those that haven’t been thrown on opponents over the last four games.
“First, they’ve been really good teams [Miami, Notre Dame, Wake Forest and Pitt – two wins and two losses.] Normally the better athletes you play against you’re more likely to have penalties because they’re really, really good.”
The most publicized incident came at Notre Dame in the second half when Kyren Williams reversed field and ran 91 yards for what might have been the decisive touchdown. Fans in the stands and watching on TV were screaming about one, two and maybe three offensive holding violations that weren’t called.
And at Pitt 12 nights later, with Carolina having a first-and-goal at the Panthers’ 2-yard line with a great chance to win the game, Brown said “five guys were clapping” before the center snapped the ball over Sam Howell’s head, luckily only losing a down when Howell fetched the ball and flung it out of bounds. On the next snap, Carolina had a false start and it became second-and-goal from the 7, which led to the tying field goal and the loss in overtime.
Most college quarterbacks have gone to clapping their hands a number of times to replace the old “hut 1, hut 2 or hut 3” as to when to snap the ball. If the defensive linemen are all clapping, sometimes the center or an offensive lineman will start too early.
Brown thinks such misleading clapping should be reviewable, just as it is a penalty if the defense is barking signals trying to draw the offense offside, which is flagged if caught by the officials.
“Clapping on the goal line, that’s not fair to our kids,” Brown said. “I wish you all could see what should have been called and what was called after we get our reports back from the ACC office every Tuesday. I think that would be more fair to our team and our coaches, but that’s not going to happen.”
It sounds like whining, but it’s not.
Photo via Jim Hawkins/247 Sports.
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