Former NFL vice president of officiating Mike Pereira believes the number of preseason penalties given for violating the league's new helmet rule was more to send a message to players than how games will actually be called moving forward.
There were 51 flags thrown during the first 33 games of the preseason for the new rule, which doesn't allow any player to lower his head to initiate contact with his helmet. The final two weeks of the preseason saw that number decrease to 20, and only one was called during Week 1 of the regular season.
"The officials called it by the letter of the law in [preseason] Weeks 1 and 2 and then they got some verbiage added to the rule in terms of interpretation that if the contact is incidental or inadvertent, then it wasn't a foul," Pereira said on Glenn Clark Radio Sept. 13. "So it gave them the license to lay off a bit. I really do think the adjustment process filtered its way down to where it was in Week 1 [of the regular season]."
