The Buffalo Bills took a shot on Richie Incognito. If you don't know who that is, he's the guy who was at the center of the ugly Dolphins bullying scandal, and he's perennially voted as one of the NFL's dirtiest players by his peers. Let's see how he's doing!
The Bills got a touchdown called back because Richie Incognito decided to be a jerk
Doing dirty things will hurt your team more than it helps.
As you can see, Incognito chooses to launch himself at the lower body of Giants DE Damontre Moore, drawing a flag. It doesn’t look like this was a poor execution of Incognito’s responsibility, or an accident. It looks like Incognito was standing around, saw Moore engaged and decided to throw his upper body into his legs.
This play was a Bills touchdown: Tyrod Taylor hit Charles Clay to cut the Giants’ lead from 24-10 to 24-17 late. Probably meaningless, but still a touchdown. Instead, it came off the board and the Bills turned it over on downs.
That’s the textbook definition of this penalty: You’re not allowed to block low on defensive linemen while they’re engaged with a blocker. There’s a rule against this because it’s dangerous: there are all sorts of ligaments and tendons in your lower body that are very easily mangled when something crashes into you from the side. The defender isn’t really paying attention and can’t really avoid the hit because he’s focused on the guy actively blocking him.
But what makes this especially gross is how unnecessary it is. For starters, he does this as Taylor is throwing the ball. His dive had literally no effect on springing the play -- all it did was negate it.
Incognito would be best served assisting his fellow linemen by staying on his feet and making sure the Giants’ three-man pass rush doesn’t get to Taylor. Instead, due to a well-executed stunt by the Giants, the rush almost does get there. Incognito wouldn’t have been able to help, because he was too busy jumping into somebody’s legs.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen an offensive lineman with a dirty reputation needlessly do something that could hurt another player at the end of a frustrating loss. They should stop! It serves no football purpose. There are only two potential outcomes: The first is you hurt another player for no reason, which is bad. The second is that you get penalized and actually hurt your team. That’s also bad.
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