The play everyone will be talking about from the Las Vegas Raiders–Kansas City Chiefs game will be the roughing-the-passer penalty on Chris Jones when he forced and recovered a fumble while tackling Derek Carr. The vast majority of people felt it was a very soft penalty and made comparisons about what the NFL is trying to make football become if you can no longer tackle the quarterback without being penalized.
Unfortunately, Monday Night Football color commentator Troy Aikman took things too far on the ESPN broadcast when describing what happened.
In the aftermath of the play, Aikman made a misogynistic comment on the roughing-the-passer call, saying, “My hope is the [NFL] Competition Committee looks at this in the next set of meetings, and you know, we take the dresses off.”
Troy Aikman: "My hope is the [NFL] Competition Committee looks at this in the next set of meetings, and you know, we take the dresses off." pic.twitter.com/5DqdLJ8Ccx
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) October 11, 2022
There are many other comparisons to make in order to point out how absurd this call was than saying you want the NFL to take the metaphorical dresses off the quarterbacks. Other people said about the NFL becoming two-hand touch. Dallas Cowboys linebacker Micah Parsons said that the NFL “want us to play like we playing in the Pro Bowl,” which will now be a flag football game.
Aikman was trying to make a point of how ridiculous this call was, and he technically did that, but it’s still no excuse to go misogynistic with it. Hopefully, the next time referees make a terrible call that protects the quarterback, Aikman takes that phrase out of his vocabulary and uses a much more appropriate comparison that will make his point.
