Richard Sherman's attempt to block a field goal by Buffalo's Dan Carpenter near halftime of Monday night's game is becoming the play that won't die.
ProFootballTalk.com is reporting Thursday morning that Seahawks cornerback Sherman will be fined $9,115 for running into Carpenter on a play when he had been ruled offsides. However, while the NFL admitted that there were some missed calls in the sequence, it is also being reported by ESPN that the officiating crew will not be reprimanded in any way.
Sherman said Wednesday he continued to try to block the kick because he did not hear a whistle and figured the Bills would be given a free attempt to make the field goal.
"There was no whistle," Sherman said. "The league goes back and hindsights everything and says this and says that because they want to appease the fans. I know the rule book and I know exactly what I was doing on that play. It's very similar to a free play, for all the uninformed people out there. If you watch (Green Bay QB) Aaron Rodgers or any team, they draw a team offsides and if a guy comes scott free at the quarterback, and he's about to get hit in the face, the refs will usually blow it then so the quarterback doesn't get hit, but if a guy's not coming scott free, they'll let the play go on. A lot of teams score a touchdown like that. They were doing the same thing. If the kick had gone through, they would have said, 'Good kick, decline the penalty, field goal good, three points.' They didn't vote the ball dead until he kicked it, so that is what it is."
Sherman also said he was not trying to take out Carpenter but that the angle of trying to block the kick resulted in contact.
"As long as he was kicking the ball, I was going to try to block it," he said. "That's the difference though. When most quarterbacks are about to get sacked, they throw the ball into the ground, or the kicker in that situation would just have not kicked the ball. You see somebody standing right in front of the ball, you don't kick the ball. If you don't want to put yourself in harm's way, don't put yourself in harm's way. You see my trajectory, the ball is still on the ground, there's no other way to block it. Usually we don't run into the kicker because the ball is already kicked. When the ball is still on the ground, there's no other way to get there but to go at that angle. People are like, 'What is that angle that you were going at, you were trying to hurt the kicker.' No, there's no other angle."
Dean Blandino, the NFL's vice president of officiating, said in comments on the NFL Network after the game that Sherman should have been penalized for unnecessary roughness.
"The officials were in the process of shutting the play down," Blandino said. "Sherman jumped offside and he was unimpeded to the kicker so we shut that down. The referee didn't think that the contact was severe enough. He felt that players were coming together and he just didn't think it was a foul. We looked at it and it is a foul. It is no different than a defender coming offside and hitting a quarterback after the whistle blew, so it should have been unnecessary roughness.
"We are absolutely going to address it. Anytime you have a sequence like that at any point during the game we want to see what happened and just walk through the steps of where the breakdown was. Regardless of the outcome of the game, we are going to address the situation with our crew."
Blandino also said that the officiating crew did not properly handle the re-kick, when the Bills were assessed for a delay-of-game penalty that was issued by the officials standing over the ball until only about five seconds remained on the play clock.
"We are absolutely going to address it," Blandino said. "Anytime you have a sequence like that at any point during the game we want to see what happened and just walk through the steps of where the breakdown was. Regardless of the outcome of the game, we are going to address the situation with our crew." But that apparently will not result in any punishment for the officiating crew.
The news of the fine could not be independently confirmed Thursday morning.
