The Green Bay Packers have suspended cornerback Jaire Alexander one game for “conduct detrimental to the team” following his participation in Sunday’s game coin toss before the 33-30 win over the Carolina Panthers.
Prior to kickoff, Alexander joined the Packers gamely captions (Aaron Jones, Quay Walker and Eric Wilson) without permission and even went on to call tails, winning the toss. The cornerback then told referee Alex Kemp that he wanted to be on defense. Kemp clarified by asking if he meant defer, to which Alexander said yes.
“I said, ‘I want our defense to be out there,’ and they all looked at me like I was crazy,” Alexander said afterward. “I’m like, I mean, it’s pretty simple what I said, like I want the defense to be out there. They like, ‘You mean defer?’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I guess.'”
When a team wins the coin toss, rather than choosing whether to kick or return to open the game, teams are actually deciding when they want they want the coach to kick or return to open a half. If a team says “we’ll receive,” that’s fine; they’re just saying they are making the choice now and would like to receive the ball.
But a player can never say, “we’ll kick” because an official could interpret that as deciding if you are making the choice to open the game by kicking off, and then the other team will make its choice at the start of the second half, at which point they will obviously choose to receive, resulting in your team kicking off to start both halves. That’s why players always say “defer,” because they are deferring their team’s choice to the second half.
“That was a big mistake,” Packers head coach Matt LaFleur said. “That’s something that you review with the guys before they go out there every time about, ‘Hey, we win the toss, we’re going to defer.’ I went to the officials before the game, made sure they knew what we were going to do. We had an incident earlier this year where we had a similar situation, so always trying to be proactive in that approach.”
Jaire clearly didn’t understand how the rule works and his explanation is pretty hilarious:
Alexander will miss the Packers’ game against the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday Night Football.
