FanPost

Officiating Love for the Patriots

For those of you who haven's seen yet, here's a link to an official asking Dont'a Hightower to move off the center so the Patriots avoid a penalty.

Here's the NFL's explanation of what happened:

"It is a standard officiating procedure that occurs regularly," league spokesman Greg Aiello told NJ.com in an email. "In fact, it is on [vice president for officiating] Dean Blandino’s video that went to the teams [Thursday] and will be on the version of it that goes to the media [Friday]. That rule was adopted for player safety purposes, another good reason to help avoid violations in advance."

Blandino followed up on the incident Friday morning on "NFL AM."

"We call it preventative officiating," Blandino said.

Here's a link to the Sun Sentinel article that was my source.

I want to be clear...I'm fine with 'preventative officiating' in order to protect player safety. The thing is, I've never seen it done before.

And it just seems a little strange that the first time I ever heard of it was during a Patriots game.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of The Phinsider's writers or editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of The Phinsider writers or editors.