The parameters of the taunt

 Hey, I'm a crotchety old guy. Or at least I'm good at playing one sometimes.

Like all crotchety old guys, see, I, too, occasionally pine for the mythic Good Old Days. You know: Those halcyon days when Larry Csonka,  after turning multiple defenders into chalk outlines on his way to the end zone, used to just drop the football like the whole thing had been nothing more than a leisurely stroll to the mailbox. It was kinda cool, in a minimalist sort of way. 

Also it was sort of taunt-y, if you look at it a certain way.

Two games into the 2021 season, the NFL has apparently decided pretty much everything is taunt-y, if you look at it a certain way. And the zebras have been doing so zealously, carrying through on the league's mandate to start cracking down on taunt-y stuff.

Here's the problem: How do they decide what's taunt-y and what isn't? And what if they're wrong?

Because, yes, looked at a certain way, a whole bunch of stuff could be considered taunt-y -- including disdainfully dropping the football after you've left the field carpeted with bodies. The zebras haven't dropped the laundry on that one yet, but they've dropped it on actions almost as ridiculous.

Like, for instance, Bills' corner Levi Wallace breaking up a pass against the Dolphins and then waving his arms in the traditional "incomplete" signal.

Flag.

Or Bears safety Tashaun Gipson clapping after an incomplete pass by the Bengals.

Flag.

Or jawing a little with the other team's quarterback -- which happens all the time, and which happened in the Bears-Bengals game.

Again, flag.

Are all of the aforementioned actually "taunting"? Do some of the end-zone celebrations upon which the NFL has simultaneously loosened the reins rise to that level? And if so, how does the league rationalize the obvious contradiction?

Look. The notion that a player disdainfully doing a Csonka after a score could be construed as taunting is absurd on its face. But given that the NFL's taunting edict has only the most nebulous of definitions, it's pretty much left up to the game officials what is or isn't taunting. And therein lies the sticking point.

Oh, you say, but the NFL does have a definition of taunting. Sort of. It's described as any word of action that "may engender ill will between teams."

But as Lauren Theisen of The Defector points out here, this is football we're talking about. "Ill will" is one of its Building Blocks of Life. Without it, football is just Field Day at Harold E. Stassen Elementary School. 

In other words, on the NFL level, you might as well outlaw tackling.

Oh, wait. They kinda already did that.