The NFL’s Ridiculous Celebration Penalties Somehow Keep Getting More Absurd

The NFL, an institution that has seen its ratings plummet this season, really earned its “No Fun League” moniker Sunday. After catching a touchdown, Washington tight end Vernon Davis was flagged for excessive celebration, a 15-yard penalty that helped the Philadelphia Eagles return the ensuing kickoff for a touchdown.

What did Davis do? Did he twerk? Did he partake in a 20-second choreographed dance? Did he point at a child in the stands wearing an Eagles jersey and make a throat slash gesture?

No! He treated the football as if it were a basketball and shot it toward the uprights.

Fifteen yards for that!

Remember when Tony Gonzalez would “dunk” the football over the crossbar? That was fun. It was legal. No one got hurt. No children died imitating the celebration (as far as I know). Or how about when Randy Moss mooned Packers fans? What happened to this world where butts and basketball mimicking became such a threat that we need to penalize these acts?

The Giants’ Odell Beckham caught a game-winning 66-yard touchdown with 1:24 remaining on a 4th-and-1 play against the Ravens. After he ran out of the back of the end zone, which puts him beyond the playing field, he took off his helmet and immediately ran to his bench so he could get one step closer to simulating sex with a kicking net. Because he removed his helmet when the play was over and he was off the field, that was a 15-yard penalty too. The Ravens nearly used that to drive for a winning touchdown.

What are we doing? Who cares if a guy takes his helmet? Who cares if he shakes it, shakes it, shakes it like a Polaroid picture? I’ll even go as far as to say I don’t care if a dude does the throat-slashing motion. Everyone gets that when that happens, he’s not advocating throat slashing of a real person, right? He’s not secretly ordering a prison hit. Remember when Joe Horn hid a cellphone under the goalpost padding and pretended to make a call after a touchdown?

That happened against the Giants. I’m a Giants fan and thought it was great. Mean, but great.

So who is getting offended by touchdown celebrations? The same people that write letters to the FCC complaining about Beyonce’s thrusts or whatever?

Here’s a secret — most NFL games are bad. There are like seven good quarterbacks and that leads to like 10 flat-out unwatchable games per week. If you’re going to torture your audience with Brian Hoyer and Brock Osweiler, just let Alshon Jeffrey treat the goalpost like a stripper pole and D’Andre Hopkins do the Thriller dance with a cheerleader. WHY DOES THIS IDEA BOTHER YOU, NFL???

The rules are unfair, unevenly enforced and could affect the outcome of games, and that should only be what we say about New England Patriots home games.