Just over a year ago, our own Andrew Kato had a detailed breakdown of how the Green Bay Packers frustratingly always get away with offensive holding without drawing a flag. “The officiating was not balanced,” Kato concluded. “There is a legitimate complaint that both teams need to be held to the same standards for a fair game to be played.”
The article drew a fair amount of criticism. Many accused Pride of Detroit of blatant homerism for suggesting there was a consistent imbalance in NFL officiating that favors the Packers.
But it appears Kato isn’t the only one who noticed this phenomenon happening on a weekly basis. Battle Red Blog contributor Brett Kollmann—who you may remember from this excellent breakdown of Matthew Stafford’s game—put together an impressively detailed breakdown of how the Packers get away with holding all of the time.
Watch below:
“To me, what’s going on in Green Bay is still remarkable,” Kollmann says. “Just think about it, they’ve found a way to, in essence, legalize offensive holding.”
Kollman does a brilliant job of analyzing the film to note how the Packers aren’t technically breaking any rules but still could definitely be defined as holding.
While I won’t go as far as saying there is an NFL conspiracy happening here, it’s nice to see an unbiased third party notice a lot of the same things Lions fans have been screaming about for the past decade. Now it’s up to the league—or the Lions—to take notice and actually do something about it.