Clay Matthews’ hit is the talk of Packers fans all over the country. It’s what people talked about at the coffee machine on Monday morning, and what will still be talked about today before the focus moves to Washington. The conversation will continue because the National Football League came out in fierce defense of their officials justifying the hit. They went as far to say that this will be shown to the rest of the league as a ‘clear-cut example of what not to do.’ It makes your head twist as a Packers and football fan. The league is only doing this because the outcome of the game.

Let’s say the Packers ended up winning this football game, 29-21. Minnesota gets the first down on the Matthews’ penalty, but they fall short. Kirk Cousins ends up not getting the job done in whichever way you want to choose for this hypothetical. This play would still get discussed by the local media, and the message would be ‘Good thing that didn’t decide the game.’ Maybe a little buzz nationally, but it goes away pretty quickly with other NFL news like Josh Gordon being a Patriot or Carson Wentz starting in Week 3. The only reason this is becoming a fact by the league is it is the sole reason we had a tie between the Packers-Vikings.

NFL will always fiercely defend themselves when the game is on the line, and the officials screw up. They want to protect their own and do it almost more than any other professional sport. Baseball does it a bit with their wonky replay review where it seems umpires can never be wrong. NFL is making sure the league doesn’t become a mockery from an officials standpoint. But that’s a hard thing to do when everyone and their mother can look at the replay on Twitter seeing a form tackle by Matthews.

Hopefully, Sunday does not feature any of this type of drama.