After updating the impact of the NFL's new PAT rule Sunday night, noting in particular how it prompted Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin to alter his post-touchdown strategy, let's move straight into our Monday morning review of the gray area in league officiating …

We have a disqualification!

A national audience saw how the league plans to crack down on fighting, or facsimiles thereof, during the fourth quarter of the Green Bay Packers' 27-17 victory over the Seattle Seahawks.

On a first-down play from the Seahawks' 37-yard line, Packers tight end Richard Rodgers engaged Seahawks linebacker K.J. Wright in a run block. In the process, Wright put his right hand underneath Rodgers' face mask and ultimately flipped him to the ground. As Rodgers lay on the ground, Wright continued to push the helmet to the side.

Rodgers responded by grabbing Wright's face mask, setting off a fracas that also involved Packers guard T.J. Lang and Seahawks defensive lineman Michael Bennett. It did not appear that any punches were thrown, but Wright was ejected in addition to receiving an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Lang and Bennett were also penalized.

Referee Gene Steratore said Wright was disqualified for "the action of pulling the face mask of the opponent," something that almost certainly would not have merited a disqualification in previous years.

We've noted that reducing fighting is a point of emphasis for the NFL this season. In most cases -- including Sunday night's -- offsetting penalties on the participants leave no impact on the game. Fines come later in the week, so ejection is the league's one true in-game hammer.

To that point, Wright had made nine tackles in addition to forcing and recovering a fumble. Without him in the lineup, the Seahawks' defense was unable to maintain a one-score game. The Packers drove 26 more yards on the possession, and Mason Crosby's 21-yard field goal gave them a commanding 10-point lead with two minutes remaining.

Wright was the first player to be disqualified this season, according to the ESPN Stats & Information penalty database. (In 2014, there were a total of 13 disqualifications.) Based on my Twitter feed Sunday night, many Seahawks fans were upset to see Wright kicked out of the game given that a similar incident did not lead to ejection for Cincinnati Bengals cornerback Adam Jones in Week 1.

The NFL did fine Jones $35,000 for slamming the bare head of Oakland Raiders receiver Amari Cooper onto his helmet. As we discussed last week, the best guess is that referee Brad Allen's crew simply didn't see the extent of Jones' actions. The amount of Jones' fine strongly suggests the NFL would have preferred for Jones to have been ejected as well.

League policy gives referees discretion to eject for any "flagrant" action -- defined in the rulebook as "extremely objectionable, conspicuous, unnecessary, avoidable or gratuitous" -- and generally speaking, they're expected to use it this season.

One cheek equals …

John Madden taught us that when it comes to a player ruled down by contact, one knee equals two feet. That was so 1985.

Here's the question that arose Sunday night: What happens when a player's, uh, backside touches the ground as he gains possession?

Packers receiver James Jones helped us learn the answer when he caught Aaron Rodgers' pass in the end zone with both feet in bounds during the second quarter. Steratore's crew originally called the play a touchdown, but when you watch the replay frame-by-frame, you see that the position of Jones' feet aren't as relevant as the timing of when his derriere hit out of bounds.

Indeed, Jones' right buttocks hit the ground at the same time as he caught the ball. Steratore passed on a chance to make an announcement for the ages, and instead said simply: "It has been determined that a part of the receiver's body touched out of bounds simultaneous with possession of the pass. When this action occurs, the ruling is an incomplete pass."

To parrot the Yiddish expression NBC announcer Al Michaels invoked Sunday night, "half a tuchus" equals two feet as well.

If anything, Steratore's crew could have considered an illegal contact penalty against Seahawks cornerback Cary Williams, who grabbed and pulled Jones' jersey at the top of the route about halfway into the end zone.

The line of scrimmage was the 1-yard line, meaning the two were out of the 5-yard area for legal contact. In the end, however, there were only eight seconds remaining on the clock and the Packers would have had only one more shot into the end zone regardless.

Confusion reigned on Sam Bradford fumble

Last week, I posted the thoughts of two former NFL officiating executives who suggested that the NFL rulebook has gotten so complicated that referees are receiving clandestine help making calls via their wireless headsets. During Sunday afternoon's game in Philadelphia, one of those men -- former vice president of officiating Mike Pereira -- got tripped up himself on the Fox broadcast.

The play happened with 7 minutes, 15 seconds remaining in the Dallas Cowboys' 20-10 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles. An early snap from Eagles center Jason Kelce, with the rest of the offensive line not set and Bradford still scanning the defense, led to a fumble recovery by Cowboys defensive lineman Nick Hayden.

When you watch the replay, you see that right guard Andrew Garner was in the process of putting his right hand on the ground when Kelce snapped the ball. Referee Tony Corrente called the Eagles for an illegal shift penalty that the Cowboys declined.

The play raised a question I hear often: Why wasn't Garner penalized for a false start, a call that would have killed the play and allowed the Eagles to maintain possession? Pereira wondered the same on the broadcast, a suggestion that NFL vice president of officiating Dean Blandino rejected on Twitter a few moments later before Pereira circled back.

Generally speaking, most of us are under the false impression that any pre-snap movement by an offensive lineman is a false start. In fact, Rule 7, Section 4, Article 2 of the NFL rulebook requires the player to have "assumed a set position" and then to move "in such a way as to simulate the start of a play" for a false start to be called. Garner was by definition still getting into a set position.

Pereira, however, interpreted the play differently. Citing Rule 7, Section 4, Article 2, Item 2, he noted that it is a false start if an interior lineman in a two-point stance then moves to a three-point stance but is not set when the snap occurs. Sounds reasonable, right?

But Pereira hadn't realized that Corrente had ruled the entire offense was not yet set when the snap occurred, which nullified the requirement for Garner himself to be set. Got that?

In this scenario, the rulebook calls for an illegal shift penalty. Rule 7, Section 5, Article 8 mandates the call when all offensive players have not come to a complete stop and gotten in a set position for one second.

The big point here is not to belabor the difference between an illegal shift and a false start, nor is it to call out Pereira nor dramatize the back-and-forth with Blandino. It's simply another illustration of the complicated and exception-filled nature of NFL rules.

I wrote the preceding paragraphs in the postgame calm with no time limit. I had a video replay of the game available online and a rulebook opened to the relevant passages. NFL officials are expected to have all of that information at the ready in real time.

When you think of it that way, it's not difficult to understand how mistakes are made -- and why they could benefit from some wireless help at times. Fortunately, in this case, Corrente made the right call from the start.