Spot the difference between these two plays:

There isn’t much of a difference. Maybe the DeVonta Smith play was more of a bang-bang type of thing with the whistle coming in late, but he was knocked out of Sunday’s game in New Orleans after taking that hit from Khristian Boyd.

The thing that makes both of these stupid is that neither guy is moving forward. Progress is stopped. Smitty is going backwards and Jamaal Williams was stood up by two linebackers when idiot Barnett decided to come in and hit him the other way. Never understood that, as a quick aside. When a player is moving backwards, away from the first down marker, why are you pushing him towards it?

But anyway, the refs have to blow the whistle faster. They have to. If you’re taking player safety seriously and head injuries seriously, then blow the play dead once forward progress is stopped. Was he still moving? Yes. But he was going sideways and going backwards and it was obvious that 6’0″, 170 pound DeVonta Smith was stopped. If this was the college game, a targeting flag would have come out, and while it may have been picked up because there’s shoulder contact, they would have at least given it a second look. This wasn’t even penalized.

The thing about these types of plays is that you’re always trying to give the tackler player the benefit of the doubt in today’s NFL, which puts more restrictions on defensive players than ever before. You can’t land on the QB. You can’t hit him below the knees or lower the helmet or lay the wood on defenseless receivers. And you’re always taught to play to the whistle. But look at that again and tell me the hit was necessary. It wasn’t.