After Sunday night’s game, the postgame noise turned from the scoreboard to the line of scrimmage. Luke Goedeke had grievances to air about Jeffery Simmons, and Jonah Jackson answered by saying the guys on the Buccaneers tried to launch themselves at the Bears on every play.
Jackson made his comments on 104.3 The Score, where he shrugged off the complaint and framed the whole exchange as standard NFL trench work. “I don’t know any different,” he said. “This is football, man. Especially in the trenches. It gets rough and rowdy.”
That is the kind of football where the details matter more than the noise after the whistle. Jackson pointed to Vita Vea as an example, saying the big man was launching at the Bears, and he added that the Bears signed up for it. His point was simple: both sides do it, and the line between legal contact and a foul depends on what officials see and are willing to call.
That part is what leaves the argument unsettled. There are so many holding penalties that never get called on offensive linemen that the game often becomes a matter of survival, not cleanliness, and the cleanest example from the source came in Carolina on Sunday, when Nik Bonitto forced a fumble by Bryce Young to seal the game even while Bonitto was being held the entire play. In that version of football, it is only a foul if a flag is thrown.
So the next question is not whether the trench play was rough. It was. The question is whether anyone on the field saw the specific contact Goedeke was upset about, or whether it disappeared into the same crowded gray area where linemen launch, grab and keep moving until the whistle or the flag finally stops them.
