Listen to any interview ever done with Travis Frederick, and it’s clear he’s a pretty cerebral guy. He was a National Honor Society member in high school, even graduating early so that he could enroll in a spring football camp at Wisconsin. While in Madison, he earned a degree in engineering mechanics with an emphasis in computer engineering. For his pregame warmup, the 320-pound center runs detailed wide receiver route trees with linemate Zack Martin. Quarterback Dak Prescott has called him “a genius.” Suffice it to say, he’s a smart dude. So to suggest that Frederick doesn’t understand one of football’s fundamental rules would border on absurd.
Yet the seventh-year veteran was quick to question his own football intelligence after an unusual tripping penalty was called against him late in the fourth quarter of the Cowboys’ 13-9 loss in New England.
“I don’t understand the rule, evidently,” Frederick told reporters after the game. “I need to get a clarification on that. When I tried to get a clarification on that, the umpire was nowhere to be found.”
The flag came on a 3rd-and-1 play, negating a first-down pickup by running back Ezekiel Elliott and leaving Dallas instead in a 3rd-and-11 situation that ultimately ended with a turnover on downs.
The tripping penalty is a rarity in the NFL, generally reserved for flagrant and obvious cases of a player flailing to bring another down while being desperately out of position. This was not that.
Even a by-the-book reading of the rule doesn’t really apply. As defined by the 2019 NFL Rulebook: Rule 3, Section 40, “Tripping is the use of the leg or foot to obstruct any opponent (including a runner).” Rule 12, Section 1, Article 8 makes tripping a prohibited act.
Did Frederick lift his leg as he shifted himself around to help double-team Patriots linebacker Dont’a Hightower? Without question. Was he attempting to trip Hightower? That’s a tough case to make.
And yet, the officials did. What’s more shocking? They did it twice.
Earlier, six-time Pro Bowl tackle Tyron Smith drew a tripping flag, too. It turned a 2nd-and-13 into a 2nd-and-23, effectively stalling the Dallas drive and leading to a punt that was blocked to give New England a short field (and eventually a touchdown) in the first quarter.
It turns out it has happened twice against the same team in the same game before, and it happened against Dallas, too.
One of the most seldom-seen penalties? Called against Dallas twice in the same game? Several Cowboys were understandably skeptical.
“I know it was my first time hearing the call,” wide receiver Amari Cooper told the media in the visitors’ locker room. “And then to hear it twice in one game, it was kind of… it was just different. I’d never heard that call. I don’t even know what it is. I’m guessing it’s tripping somebody? Like, putting your foot out and tripping them?”
“I mean, that’s been all season long, so it’s no surprise,” Prescott said during his press conference in reference to iffy calls working against the team. “It’s nothing new. As I’ve said before and I’ll continue to say, I’m just going to play the play. That’s my job; I’ll let those guys do their job.”
“I see the definition of whether you’ve made a move, and got your toe down,” owner Jerry Jones told a crowd of reporters, “Whether it’s tripping or not, I don’t want to go to those two particular tripping calls, if you will. I don’t want to go to that.”
Coach Jason Garrett was blunt in his reaction to the tripping flags after the game: “I’ve never seen that before.”
Most who were watching the game seemed to concur.
Even ESPN’s NFL officiating analyst weighed in.
That the penalties came in a game against the Patriots and coach Bill Belichick- with their history of leveraging every possible advantage- made the whole episode even more curious.
That theory calls to mind last season’s Week 7 game versus Washington, in which long snapper L.P. Ladouceur was flagged for a “snap infraction” on a late field goal try. The call moved the Cowboys back five yards; kicker Brett Maher missed the subsequent attempt, and Dallas lost the game. Then-Redskins coach Jay Gruden had reportedly gone to officials prior to the game and warned them to watch Ladouceur’s movements, the exact same ritual the veteran has employed in his snaps for 15 NFL seasons. Ladouceur went through his mechanics. The Redskins jumped. The flag was thrown. The Cowboys were moved backward in a critical moment.
It worked for Washington in 2018. And it’s certainly plausible that Belichick used the same strategy this past weekend in Foxborough.
Even if officials were badgered by a coach into seeing trips that weren’t really there, Frederick took the high road afterward.
“I don’t know how, exactly, the calls come out. I don’t know how that works, and we’re frankly not allowed to talk about the referees and their calls. It’s a call that was made, and you’ve got to try to put yourself in a better situation so that something like that doesn’t make a tremendous impact on the game. You’ve got to able to try and take those type of things out of the game altogether.”
Defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence said, as a defender, he knows what tripping actually looks like.
“I get tripped up every time,” Lawrence said in postgame interviews, “but, I mean, it’s cool. I ain’t going to sit here and cry about it. If the refs want to call [expletive], let them call the [expletive]. It’s all about what we do… Everybody knows it was no such thing, that a foot was thrown out or anybody was tripped.”
“It’s all up and down,” Lawrence concluded. “They make the rules; we just play the game.”
After one of the rarest penalties in the sport was called on Dallas twice in the same game, it sure seems like the Cowboys weren’t the only ones playing games on Sunday.
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