Monday’s Wild Card game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers featured the final Manningcast of the year. NFL legend and current Colorado Buffaloes head coach Deion Sanders was a guest on the alternate cast of the game and gave a hilarious reaction to a controversial roughing-the-passer call.
The play occurred in the first quarter when Buccaneers defensive lineman Akeem Hicks hit Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott as he was letting go of a pass. Hicks was flagged for the hit that was close to the head and neck area, but Sanders voiced his frustrations with the call.
“C’mon man, they can’t even touch you guys anymore,” said Sanders to both Peyton Manning and Eli Manning on quarterbacks in the NFL. “Don’t you want to play right now? Tell the truth, don’t you guys want to play right now?”
"WHERE IS THE ROUGHING? WHERE IS THE ROUGHING? WHERE IS THE ROUGHING?"- Deion Sanders 🏈 #ManningCast pic.twitter.com/Om3yccTJh0
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) January 17, 2023
Both Peyton and Eli resoundingly agreed with Sanders, saying that they indeed would like to play in this era of football with increased roughing-the-passer calls.
Sanders then continued to blast the officials, screaming that he did not understand why roughing the passer was called on the play.
“Look at this, where is the roughing? where is the roughing? where is the roughing?” Sanders continuously said while watching a replay of the hit.
Roughing the passer has been a call that has increasingly been called in key moments this postseason, with another controversial call coming in Sunday’s game between the Minnesota Vikings and the New York Giants.
As Sanders stated in his rant, it is becoming more and more difficult for defensive players to hit the quarterback without being flagged, and it is something that most NFL fans want to see fixed moving forward.
