Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

Watching the Cowboys - Packers game tonight reminded me of a rule that has started to drive me nuts, which was down by contact, called on the interception return the cowboy's had which would have otherwise been at TD.

I don't think anyone wants to return to 1950s style, pin the guy down like a wrestler, as required for a tackle. And I'm fine with a "down by contact" where a tackler pushes a player down, intentionally taps a player down, or makes some active or intentional move to down someone with the ball.

What I object to is a player with possession goes down and somebody accidentally touches them or touches them even without their knowledge, to me in order for someone to be down by contact it should be an intentional act of a player to make a tackle. I know this is fraught with judgment, but there are many of these where it is just clearly obvious there was no intent, I hate those being tackles.

What's your opinion on this?

Same game had the Christian Watson incident where he wasn't down by contact. And that is much more infuriating, to me, than the 'accidental' down by contact situations.

It's eliminated football IQ tests. e.g. DB intercepts pass, isn't touched, immediately drops the ball and takes off sprinting with all his teammates to the opposite end zone to do their asinine poses and preplanned dances. That type of idiocy used to be punished, with a still live ball. Now it's always "runner gave himself up" even in the cases where they clearly weren't 'giving themselves up' but rather just don't know any better.

So rather than the no-intent "tackles" described in the OP, I more so miss things like the Plaxico Burress spike v. the Jaguars being a live ball.