It's difficult to get people to universally agree on anything these days, but the NFL's increased emphasis on calling taunting penalties this season has been met with disapproval from many, many fans.
Sunday's Week 2 games saw a few taunting penalties called that were pretty questionable. Overall, eight taunting penalties have been called in Week 2 -- with one more game left Monday night -- which is tied for the most in any single week since the 2000 season, per CBS Sports.
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There were plenty of tweets Sunday that looked pretty similar to the messages seen below:
There's always a line that can't be crossed, and if players go too far while celebrating a play/moment they should be penalized. Most of what we saw Sunday didn't warrant a penalty, though (click here to watch a video of those plays). If you don't want opponents to celebrate, do a better job defending them.
Patriots head coach Bill Belichick was asked about the taunting penalty during a Monday morning interview with WEEI's "The Greg Hill Show". Belichick doesn't seem to have an issue with it.
New England Patriots
“In general, I don’t think there’s a place for taunting in the game,” Belichick said. “I think that’s poor sportsmanship and it leads to other things. It leads to retaliation, and then where do you draw the line? I think the whole idea of the rule is to kind of nip it in the bud and not let it get started.
“I’m in favor of that. I think that we should go out there and compete and try to play good football and win the game on the field. I don’t think it’s about taunting and poor sportsmanship. That’s not really my idea of what good football is.”
We've only seen two weeks of the season, but so far, the league's decision to put a larger emphasis on eliminating taunting seems to have done more harm than good.