It seems like more flags are being thrown than ever in the NFL. That's not true. But penalties these days are much more likely to impact the outcomes of games, just as they did last night in the Bengals-Chiefs AFC championship Game.
Something bothered me about the late-hit penalty on Bengals defensive end Joseph Ossai in the AFC Championship Game. It wasn’t the ruling, which was correct, or the rule, which makes sense. It wasn’t that officials called the penalty at such a critical juncture of the game; the definition of a penalty shouldn’t change with two minutes left just because fans and media might be annoyed by its impact on the game.