Several NFL Players Blast The League After Dolphins’ William Hayes Tears ACL Trying To Avoid Flag For New Roughing The Passer Rule

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Today, Miami Dolphins Adam Gase revealed that the team lost defensive end William Hayes for the season with an ACL injury.

Hayes was injured in the second quarter of yesterday’s Dolphins-Raiders game when he sacked Derek Carr and tried to not land on top of the Raiders QB to avoid getting flagged for a roughing the passer penalty which states that players can get penalized for “landing on a passer with all or most of his body weight”.

A rushing defender is prohibited from committing such intimidating and punishing acts as “stuffing” a passer into the ground or unnecessarily wrestling or driving him down after the passer has thrown the ball, even if the rusher makes his initial contact with the passer within the one-step limitation provided for in (a) above. When tackling a passer who is in a defenseless posture (e.g., during or just after throwing a pass), a defensive player must not unnecessarily or violently throw him down or land on top of him with all or most of the defender’s weight. Instead, the defensive player must strive to wrap up the passer with the defensive player’s arms and not land on the passer with all or most of his body weight.

Several NFL players took to Twitter to blast the new rule for thinking about QBs and not the defensive players.