The Sports Prof agrees with ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr. that there ought to be two kinds of interference penalties in the NFL. NewMexiKen agrees. Here’s some of what he says:
In football, there are two types of roughing the kicker penalties and two types of facemask penalties. Call them “lite” and “regular” or “you just nicked the guy” or “you dadgum plowed him over.” However you slice it, if it’s at the ticky-tack end of the continuum, your team gets a smaller penalty and not necessarily a game-changing one.
That seems about right. If you simply bump a kicker on fourth and nine, it’s a five-yard penalty but it’s not an automatic first down. If you flatten the guy, you get more yards tacked on and an automatic first down.
Interestingly, right now the same logic doesn’t apply to the pass interference penalty. Brush a guy fifty-two yards downfield and the penalty is at the spot of the foul, which, translated into layman’s terms, means that it’s a fifty-two yard penalty. Clock the guy at the same spot, and, yes, it’s the same fifty-two yard penalty.