Dirty Birds: Ravens Chop Blocking at Hampton's Knees

Yeah, thank the lord Hampton still has knees. Of course, since he didn’t get injured, no penalty and no fine!

that explains a lot.

Jonnybingo22 Adam Barnard
@BelowZero8 that’s why yandas the best guard in football #ravens #nfl #sizzleanbacon.

meaning Bal_hawk, was already crying about how our players were crying on another Steeler fan post. I didn’t blast him, I wanted too, but the new and improved Steeler Fever refrained. The Steeler players bringing it up to the media will have the NFL and the officals watching for dirty play more closely in the next game between us, when we pluck their feathers and……..nope not gonna say it.

Lets move on…….how bout those seahawks next week ?

I am so done with this classless team. Can I come root for upstanding, respectful Steelers please?

Weren’t you guys illegally throwing punches? I think so…

I would like for the refs to catch it, but thats not always the case. The only thing Tomlin can do about it is send the tape to the league office to be reviewed and hopefully get some officials that will watch for it next time.

I still respect the Ravens, even though I’m a little disappointed that they kept doing it. Not a respectful tactic.

Doesn’t change the fact that they beat the crap out of us.

That Ravens ran a whole lot of zone blocking scheme (where the whole line moves to one side in unison) like your pics show and chop blocked Hampton and the backside 3-technique. Says he had never seen the Ravens do this.

Lets hope the coaches have the players better prepared for these type tactics next time they face em. Texans also employ a zone blocking scheme, whom we play in week 4.

Hampton says he didn’t complain to the ref. And I have no problem with that. But the coaches have to notice stuff like that and report it to Tomlin so he can talk to the officials about it. Asking officials to monitor a certain infraction by the other team is part of the head coach’s game day responsibilities. Just ask Troy Edwards.

I didn’t see where the Ravens slowed the Snack down all that much. It was the rest of the D (except for Ike Taylor) that didn’t do their jobs on Sunday.

Illegal? Yes, but since when is that news? Deebo gets held more than any player in the league, but you don’t see him complaining about it; at least not anymore (cough, cough LaMarr). If he does this week about this chop-blocking it’ll will probably be out of spite for Goodell and concern for a teammate. Sure this confirms that the Ravens are assholes, but they are far from the first team to employ this practice.

It’s not like if the Ravens had blocked cleanly we woulda won the game. What happened on Sunday was flat out domination due to a number of things. I chalk it up to one of those days where you can’t catch a break and everything that can go wrong goes wrong. If the our boys are smart they’ll take a mental note and maybe decide to play inspired football on November 6th instead of the bullshit they gave us a few days ago. Suggs didn’t earn any brownie points when he said he’d take a fine to menace a QB, and while classless as it may seem, maybe that’s the attitude you need to have to beat your hated rivals.

this picture shows better angle at the second incident

“CHOP BLOCK ON RUN (BY A LINEMAN)
(6) On a running play, A1, an offensive lineman, chops a defensive player after the defensive player has been engaged by A2 (high or low), and the initial alignment of A2 is more than one position away from A1. This rule applies only when the block occurs at a time when the flow of the play is clearly away from A1.”

From what I understand of this rule, chop blocks are legal on run plays under a few conditions:

1. The flow of the play is away from A1 (Yanda)
2. A1 and A2 (Birk) are more than one position away from each other

The play was clearly to the left, so the (1) is true. However, Yanda is the G lined directly next to the C. So (2) is false. So, it’s still illegal, right?

After an extensive amount of research, it seems like the play isn’t illegal according to NFL rules. However, it does appear to be dirty and kind of an unwritten rule where you do not do it. Who knows. I changed up my wording to make it fit that thought.

Curious. Were these just screenshots taken from the highlight of these two runs? Or did you somehow get the full game on your computer? I have been able to get Terps games on my comp from downloading them on a certain site, but never NFL games. The quality is magnificent.

Seattle runs ZBS & the line coach is Tom Cable. We employ cut blocking. We saw it a few times in the preseason from Robert Gallery, but that’s about it so far. He got flagged once for an illegal cut. He has been practicing and may play.

I never liked cut blocking, I hated it when Denver did it, and I hate it now. I wish it were more illegal. As Dr. Z always used to say, no cutting unless you’re face up. Eventually I’m sure we’ll get there, it will be fully illegal but just a word of warning, don’t be surprised to see it again this week.

That’s why it sucks to have them in the AFC North. They are dirty cut-throat sons of bitches. And they’ve always been dirty in a way that you could tell it was coached.

Whatever, it’s the Steelers responsibility to prevail despite the worst that the purple gang can throw at them. They most definitely failed to do so on Sunday. Shutting them down in the first drive may have headed off the worst of it, but that was an ass beating waiting to happen. The 2007 Monday Night Beatdown only came after the ravens had embarrassed and brutalized the Steelers twice in 2006. It goes in cycles.

I’m just glad I was somewhat mentally prepared for some of the many worst-case scenarios that played out last week.

 were measusing the kness of players during the combine…
You have to have strong knees to play the dirty Ravens…

Is there any play in football that has a higher likelihood of a player being seriously (possibly carreer ending) injured than the chop block? I can’t think of one. Yet they allow it to happen repeatedly? Even if the ref did see it, the rules seem to skew it into a judgement call, and that is just plain wrong. It should just be illegal across the board. I realize it happens pretty fast, but interior OL aren’t usually diving forward. This could be a clue to the refs. And I’m not just saying this because it happened against the Steelers, btw. I’ve felt this way for a long time.

This is disappointing. I cannot believe that the Steelers and their fans are whining this much.

The fact is that the Ravens were not illegally blocking the Steelers in the game. Sure, maybe it is a bit dangerous, but how is it any more dangerous than Ward blindsiding defensive players that are away from the play.

All the arguments that you guys are using against the Ravens’ chop blocks were used against Ward’s blindside blocks before they were made illegal… Are they dangerous? Yes. Are they legal? Yes, so we don’t care. Steelers fans use to get so pissed (and still do) about other teams whining about Ward’s blindside blocks, and now you guys are whining about chop blocks that were technically legal? That’s laughable.

This all just seems so hypocritical… especially since the Steelers were complaining just last season about the commissioner making them play ‘soft’ because he was fining them for hard hits. Now, the Steelers are whining because a team was too rough with them? Give me a break.

I think the Ravens just gave the Steelers a taste of their own medicine, and they didn’t like it.

Let’s move on, guys. You’re just embarrassing yourselves and the great legacy of your team.