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One of the most controversial plays from Week Two of the preseason happened in Minnesota, where Jaguars cornerback A.J. Bouye drew a penalty for lowering his helmet and initiating contact with Vikings fullback C.J. Ham.

Bouye indeed lowered his helmet, and his helmet made contact with Ham. In the league’s weekly officiating video, however, senior V.P. of officiating Al Riveron explains that it wasn’t a foul on Bouye because Bouye was actually bracing for contact.

Making the explanation even more intriguing, and potentially instructive: Riveron said that Ham, whose helmet also was lowered, was also bracing for contact. Ham didn’t actually make contact with his helmet, so it wasn’t a foul on him, anyway. (The officials flagged only Bouye.) But this notion of “bracing” for contact could be another way to limit and narrow the focus of a new rule ostensibly aimed at limiting the instances in which the helmet is used as a weapon.

This interpretation didn’t require a non-change change to the rule, unlike the non-addition addition of the exception for “inadvertent or incidental contact” to the 21-word rule that previously contained no such exception. The rule, as originally written, requires a player to be initiating contact, and Riveron’s explanation of the Ham-Bouye hit seems to represent an indication that, as two players approach each other on the field, the league will regard both of them as bracing, not initiating.

It’s a subtle yet dramatic shift in the interpretation of the rule. Riveron explained during a visit to the #PFTPM podcast before Wednesday’s conference call aimed at refining the rule that, in theory, two players approaching each other could be called simultaneously for violating the rule. While that’s still possible, this sudden notion of mutual bracing for contact dramatically limits the instances where two players would be essentially targeting each other with head lowered and a forceful lunge aimed at delivering a punishing blow to an opponent.

This is actually very good news for those who believed that the new rule would go far beyond its intended scope. And it’s very bad news for whoever may have tried to dramatically reduce the involvement of the helmet in the game by adroitly slipping through the cracks an excessively broad rule that was poised to revolutionize the game, and not in a good way.