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Street brawls and cheap shots are about to become a bit more common in the NFL.

After banging each other under the hood, the NFL opted to fine habitual offender Cortland Finnegan of the Titans and repeat offender Andre Johnson $25,000 each — the league minimum for a second offense . Neither player will sit out next week’s game as was widely speculated.

Last week, the NFL assessed the same fine on the Raiders’ Richard Seymour for his sucker punch on Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. This was a second offense for Seymour.

Finnegan was warned to watch his on-field roughness in Week 4 or that he would face a possible suspension. I suppose a suspension would be possible if Johnson’s detached head was still in the helmet when Finnegan threw it.

The league is sending a very clear message that this behavior will be lightly punished. Especially when the fine amounts to 5½ minutes of work.

Week 12: Buccaneers at Ravens

Tampa-based beat reporters witnessed an argument involving the Buccaneers cornerback Aqib Talib and field judge Boris Cheek. Talib was upset at a pass interference call against fellow cornerback Myron Lewis (Update 11/29: NFL.com has video of the penalty) and apparently confronted Cheek after the game near the locker room. According to Anwar Richardson in the Tampa Tribune and St. Petersburg Times’ Rick Stroud, the two-way critique between Talib and Cheek progressed like this:

Talib: “You made a pussy call.”

Cheek: “You played like a pussy.”

Talib: “I’ll (hit) you in your bitch ass mouth.”

Talib had to be restrained by his teammates. (Why does this remind me more of South Park?) The game supervisor would not comment since the incident did not happen on the field. A league spokesman said they will look into the issue. Carl Cheffers is the crew chief.

File photo of Boris Cheek from 2008.

Week 12: Titans at Texans

Rarely do any fistfights in football inflict damage on the combatants. However, Titans cornerback Cortland Finnegan and Texans receiver Andre Johnson found a way around that and had one of the most violent fights in the NFL in the color television era.

Undoubtedly the NFL will not provide the video link to it on their site, the only officially sanctioned source for video clips. We will post a link if we find one (or alert us to one in the comments). (Update: I owe the NFL a big apology. Here is the video.)

Both players yanked off each other’s helmets as they pummeled each other in an old-fashioned hockey-style fight. The officials, armed with just whistles and yellow flags, had little to do to break up the fight.

Finnegan is already on notice by the league; in Week 4 that he was notified that he faces possible suspension for any future on-field acts. The level of the battle is likely to have both players suspended anyway, so Finnegan might have an extremely rare multiple-game suspension for an on-field incident. Finnegan and Johnson were ejected from the game after the fourth-quarter incident.

Clete Blakeman was the referee and side judge Greg Meyer is shown giving Johnson the ejection signal immediately after the fight breaks.

The Titans and Texans met in Week 2 of 2009 with an ejection and fines being levied for fighting during that game.

Updated 11/29 for new feature, below

If you see a call that is a turkey, let us know in the comments section of this post. Referee assignments are after the jump.

Update: Starting this week, we will update the open forum with any calls we read about that aren’t worthy of (or if we don’t have time for) a full, standalone post. If we miss one, send us a link in the comments. Some of these may expand to full posts later in the week, as well.

• Steelers at Bills. Steelers linebacker James Harrison believes that he shouldn’t have been flagged for roughing the passer (for helmet-to-helmet contact) in the third quarter (via Scott Brown, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review).
• Jaguars at Giants. Jaguars coach Jack Del Rio questioned the offensive pass interference call against Kassim Osgood in the fourth quarter (via Vito Stellino, The Florida Times-Union). Also in that game, there was no penalty called on Jaguars defensive back Tyron Brackenridge for contact after a fair catch on Darius Reynaud. While Giants coach Tom Coughlin didn’t question the call, the game supervisor, former veteran referee Johnny Grier, phoned the league office in Manhattan about the non-call according to Mike Garafolo of The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.
• Eagles at Bears. A question was raised in a discussion board about a player who does not try to advance an onside kick. When a player “gives himself up” he does not have to be touched down by an opponent to have the play declared dead. This happens more often on kicks (because it prevents the clock from running), but the same applies when a quarterback takes a knee to run out the clock.

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Week 11: Lions at Cowboys

Maybe it is some sort of unwritten code in professional football circles, but you rarely see a player tackled by long hair sticking out of the helmet. It may considered poor practice to tackle a player that way, but it is entirely legal. The rules consider that long hair is a part of the uniform, as it would otherwise be an advantage for a long-locked player to obscure his jersey with his hair.

Marion Barber (24) and his hair from an August 2010 preseason game.

In a fourth-quarter, goal-to-go situation, Cowboys running back Marion Barber was legally tackled by his dreadlocks by Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh. However, Suh was penalized for a horse-collar tackle. This gave the Cowboys a new set of downs from the five-yard line, which lead to a pull-ahead touchdown.

The horse-collar tackle was a declared illegal in 2006, as the nature of pulling a ball carrier down from the back shoulder area twists his body awkwardly. This twisting, exacerbated by the weight of the tackler, causes season- and career-ending ligament damage and broken bones. The Dallas Morning News has an excellent animation of the anatomy (literally) of a horse-collar tackle.

This play was not a horse-collar tackle (video, 0:43 in). While there are some signatures of such a tackle (like a ball carrier being bent backwards from the top of his frame), there are many aspects notably absent (for instance, Suh doesn’t apply his weight into the tackle and does not pull Barber all the way to the ground).

Line judge Darryll Lewis threw the penalty flag on this, while referee Carl Cheffers and umpire Undrey Wash are clearly indicating that the tackle was by the hair. While I never considered this possibility before, if the hair is part of the uniform, it could be part of a horse-collar tackle. But Cheffers and Wash should have corrected the situation by pointing out the elements of the tackle that did not make it a horse collar.

Photo credit: Michael Glasgow

Leave your comments on the calls for Week 11 here. Referee assignments are after the jump.

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Let us know in the comments section of this thread about any questionable calls from Week 10. Referee assignments are after the jump.

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WEEK 9: STEELERS AT BENGALS

The NFL does not generally make public announcements regarding mistaken calls by the referees. Occasionally, they will contact the team with such an admission, and these conversations are generally confidential. Generally, these conversations are only leaked out, and Vikings coach Brad Childress found out two weeks ago that the league doesn’t appreciate these admissions making the public wire. He was fined for disclosing this confidential information.

It’s unknown whether a league or team source was the tip-off, but Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Gerry Dulac  reported on Friday that the NFL had agreed with Steelers coach Mike Tomlin on two contested calls from the Monday night game. The two calls on consecutive plays helped set up the Bengals on the 1-yard line for a fourth-quarter touchdown:

• A low-hit call on Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer was penalized 15 yards on nose tackle Casey Hampton.
• Cornerback Ike Taylor was penalized for pass interference on Bengals receiver Terrell Owens.

The first call is in an odd category of an acceptable call. The league has long told the officials that if they are unsure of head and knee contact being illegal, they should err on the side of safety and call the penalty. So even though the league may agree that there was no penalty because Palmer’s thigh was contacted, and not his knee, the official was following the safety-first provision.

The crew was headed by Ron Winter.

Drop us a line in the comments regarding any calls you disagree with in Week 9. Sorry, we’ve not updated the discussion during the past couple of weeks. Barring any major news this week, we will backtrack and cover some of the call from Weeks 7 and 8. Referee assignments for this week are after the jump.

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