Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis doesn’t like the extent to which the league protects quarterbacks.
And, after a pair of roughing-the-pretty-boy penalties kept first-half touchdown drives alive for the Patriots in Sunday’s 27-21 win, Lewis has sounded off about the situation.
“Without totally going off the wall here, it’s embarrassing to the game,” Lewis said, per Albert Breer of SportingNews.com. “You can’t do that. [Tom] Brady’s good enough to make a play. Let him make his own play. You can’t end the play like that, and then throw the flag. No, man. The embarrassing part is when he understands that, and he walks up to one of us and says, ‘Oh, that was a cheap one.’
“That’s not football,” Lewis added. “And that’s the embarrassing part about it. Two great teams going at it, like them go at it. But you can’t stop drives like that, you can’t throw flags and say, ‘Oh, you touched the quarterback.’ Put flags on them. Put a red buzzer on them, so if we touch them, they’re down.”
Look, the rules are the rules. And the quarterbacks of every team have the same protections (except when scoring a touchdown and a 300-pound defensive tackle runs across the goal line and dives on his back).
The candor from Lewis could result in a fine. But he’s not really calling out the officials as much as he’s complaining about the league-wide protection of the guys who throw the passes.