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Anthony Barr: Late hit on Detroit QB not a penalty says NFL

By Dan Zinski

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Detroit Lions player Golden Tate implied on Tuesday that Anthony Barr‘s late hit on Matthew Stafford, a play for which Barr was flagged, was dirty.

But the NFL doesn’t agree with Golden Tate. In fact, the NFL doesn’t even think the play should have drawn a flag.

Mike Zimmer discussed the play during his Wednesday press conference and said, though he initially saw the play as a dumb move by Barr, he reversed himself after talking to league officials (via Vikings.com):

"I probably owe Anthony Barr an apology because I talked to the officials last night. These quarterbacks now, they’re starting to slow down as they go out of bounds and kind of egging these things on, and so that was one of the things we talked about. He said yeah, it probably should not have been called."

On the play in question, Detroit QB Matthew Stafford does appear to slow up before going out-of-bounds, possibly baiting Barr into taking a shot at him.

The play ultimately meant nothing as the Vikings went on to a fairly easy victory. It’s just funny that Golden Tate would cite this as an example of dirty play by the Vikes when it’s arguable that Stafford is the one pulling the questionable move.

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Though this play perhaps should not have drawn a flag, the fact is that the refs are going to throw laundry to protect quarterbacks and you have to be aware of that if you’re a defensive player.

So hopefully Anthony Barr learned his lesson from this play: don’t fall for the crafty slowing-up-while-going-out-of-bounds move again.

Guys like Matthew Stafford are going to whip out every dirty trick in the book to try and draw the flag. So don’t play into their devious hands.

Next: Matt Kalil is being a jerk on the field

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