Listen to the blatant references to "rules"...from
a Jan 15 press conference:
Q: How clear cut is your understanding of the rule that was enforced when
Eric Rowe got the penalty for trying to pull a guy off of the pile where a scrum had ensued? Is it a matter of a guy trying to do the right thing –
BB: What's the right thing? What are you talking about? What's the right thing?
Q: By trying to separate players from the pile…
BB: You can't do that. No, you can't do that. You can't pull players off the pile. That's not the right thing. That rule is clear cut. There's no question about it. You can't do that.
Q: Is it a clear cut teaching point for your team that when emotions get high like that they can't have mental mistakes like that?
BB: You can't do things that are defined by the rules as illegal. You can't do them, period. There's no right thing to do. The rule is the rule. You have to play the game by the rules. Obviously, we've got to do a better job of coaching it. We've got to do a better job of coaching all of the rules. We can't hold, we can't get personal fouls, we can't do things that are against the rules or we get penalized for them. There's no doing the right thing. The right thing is playing within the rules. Now football is football. Sometimes you're trying to do the right thing and you get called for something. Sometimes stuff happens. [Vincent] Valentine got his hand up a little high and pushed the facemask back of the lineman. It was a good call. I don't think it was intentional, but he did it, and didn't get it down quick enough and they called him for it. I mean that's football. As a team we've got to make good decisions and play penalty-free. That's our goal every week. The right thing is to play within the rules, period, black and white.