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Is There an Echo Here?
Running it up? »
Distant Karma
Baseball is full of unwritten rules. You’re not supposed to try to steal a base if you’re up big. You don’t lay down a bunt in the late innings if the other pitcher has a no-hitter going. There was even one situation in this year’s playoffs where a pitcher didn’t like the way that a particular batter dropped his bat after ball four. Someone needs to write down all of these rules so that we can keep track of them but then, of course, they wouldn’t be unwritten rules.
There are not many such rules in football. Most transgressions that might be considered unsportsmanlike have had legislation attached to them that draws a 15-yard penalty. Yell at a player lying unconscious on the ground, draw a 15-yard flag. Taunt an opponent on your way to the end zone, get backed up 15 on the ensuing kickoff.
A grey area in all of this is running up the score. There is no penalty for it but some consider it to be the supreme act of unsportsmanlike conduct.
And, make no mistake about it, the New England Patriots ran up the score in their 52-7 thrashing of the Redskins. They kept on trying to score points when they had the game well in hand. That’s running up the score.
The question is—is there anything wrong, unfair, or unsportsmanlike about that?
In the NFL, the answer is no. This isn’t an NCAA power team beating up on a lowly 1-AA opponent. The Redskins and the Patriots compete on a level playing field. To steal a concept from Steve Spurrier, it isn’t Bill Belichick’s job to stop the Patriots from scoring. It’s Gregg Williams’ job and he and the 11 players on the field didn’t get it done.
After the game, Gibbs said that he had no problem at all with what the Patriots did. He shouldn’t. In 1991, Gibbs’ Redskins had a comfortable 35-17 lead over the Falcons going into the fourth quarter. Rather than call running plays to kill the clock, Gibbs had Mark Rypien throw the ball. He threw touchdown passes of 82 yards to Gary Clark and of 64 yards to Art Monk. And these weren’t dinky passes with a lot of missed tackles and YAC. They were bombs away. That made it 49-17 and Andre Collins finished off the scoring with a touchdown on a return of Bret Favre’s first NFL pass. Nobody clad in burgundy and gold complained about the score being run up.
You can go back further in the history of the franchise to find more examples of running it up. In 1966 the Redskins held a 69-42 lead over the New York Giants in the last minute of the game. The Giants threw an incomplete pass on fourth down. Someone on the Redskins sideline—legend says it was bitter ex-Giant Sam Huff—wasn’t happy with 69 points and sent in the field goal team to push the score over 70. The Redskins and their fans celebrated being on the winning end of the highest scoring NFL game ever; nobody pointed out the cheap score at the end.
The Pats have their reasons for doing things the way that they do them. You can’t argue with their track record of success that Belichick has compiled over the past several years. The price for doing things that way is that the team and its fans will never be able to protest when another team kicks them when they are down. Such complaints will be devoid of any credibility after what has transpired this year.
What goes around comes around. It takes a while sometimes. John Lennon’s Instant Karma doesn’t always apply. On Sunday in Foxboro, the Redskins got a taste of what their predecessors dished out in the past. Someday, the Patriots will get theirs.
