The Zebras Run Amok
Another week, another officiating controversy. For a country that hates unions as much as we do and makes sure they receive as little power as possible in most cases, the NFL officiating union must have some dark summoning power to keep being this shit and have the NFL just continuously roll with it.
There has been no shortage of “Refs bad” comics here. I’ve made quite a few of those over the years. Bad officiating is always present in any sport. Bad calls will happen every year. There will always be officiating controversies and the job of an official is not easy and I will never suggest it is. But there’s no way to escape the feeling that the NFL officiating is just getting worse and worse and has been declining for quite some time. These days it genuinely feels like we get a “replacement ref” moment every week. There are calls and obvious flubs that occur in every game now that sent us into a tizzy in 2012 (Christ it was really that long ago?).
This past weekend saw the newest edition of Refs Bad, when they failed to properly announce the Lions pass catcher eligibility. The NFL doubled down, claiming the Lions were using deliberate obfuscation tactics to try and disguise and confuse the Cowboys on the upcoming play. Besides being a…tenuous claim at best, it doesn’t fucking matter. The player who was eligible reported, the player they announced was wrong, and the play got removed when the refs figured it out. The ref’s job is to announce the reporting player to the crowd/other team. The ref failed. The ref called the name of the guy jogging out and not the guy who actually reported, despite Campbell even going over the plan with the refs beforehand. The ref failed at his job and it cost the Lions the win. It would have changed the game to call it right, because the Cowboys, had they paid attention, would have probably adjusted coverage to the guy who was actually eligible. Maybe the play would have worked properly or gotten stopped with proper coverage, we’ll never know. What we instead got was the Cowboys covering an illegal formation because the ref was asleep at the wheel. A failure of officiating, again.
This isn’t even a Ref vs Lions meme thing. This is outright, consistent incompetence across the board. Many Cowboys fans and pundits have pointed out the game shouldn’t have even reached this point because on the previous drive, Dallas was called for a tripping penalty that actually should have gone against Aidan Hutchinson of Detroit, which would have probably allowed Dallas to run out the clock. This miss was a little more forgivable in terms of difficulty calling it in real time, but the fact remains that it was another miss in a pile of mistakes the size of the great Pacific garbage patch.
Every fucking week with this. We had the Chiefs/Packers debacle of a game-ending drive earlier this year. We’ve had two straight Super Bowls anticlimatically ended on penalty calls that were ignored all game. The Giants got screwed out of another game-winning play attempt against the Bills when they called one DPI but not the even more obvious one following it. I can’t remember the last time I saw a QB roughing the passer penalty that felt like it was justified and not pathetic.
This has been degrading for years and the NFL consistently and repeatedly does NOTHING. Without fail they will send out a letter the next day either giving a wimpy apology that changes absolutely nothing or straight up doubling down on the bad call and backing the officials. The League refuses to modernize the position of the ref too. The AAF and XFL have both had additions and ideas for a more modern official that would be welcome and are called for in the NFL (like the much-championed sky judge) and the NFL just…fucking does nothing. The NFL continues to introduce more and more stupid, nitpicky rules that are nebulous in definition so that the refs are basically winging it based on vibes when they have to call the play, which is part of the reason we still don’t know what a catch is or now, what roughing is.
But the refs themselves are also to blame. They proved their worth in the lockout and seem to be coasting ever since. We basically saw them rebel after the infamous missed Rams DPI NFFCG debacle caused PI to become challengable. The NFL is the only league without full-time refs, not even a single crew is more than a part-time worker. Why? It has to be because the ref union fought against it, that the members liked being able to hold down other jobs since NFL games aren’t as frequent as other sports I guess. But while that might be acceptable for some of the refs, maybe even most of them, there’s no reason we still shouldn’t have full-time officials in some capacity to bring more consistency and improvement to the rulebook. We need a full-time crew of officials to go through the system every year, to weed out the worst crews and hold refs accountable since the league currently refuses to do so. They downgraded Brad Allen’s crew from the playoffs after the Lions mess, but I don’t really know how much of a punishment that is for a ref crew and it’s not like Brad Allen’s crew is uniquely bad, they are all bad. They’ve all fucked up this badly.
My usual thought about NFL problems is that the NFL won’t fix any problems until it costs them money. But this…it’s affecting betting. It HAS been affecting betting. This crap has been hurting the league’s bottom line for some time now. People like me have been lambasting the league for years. Owners have bitched about the refs. It damages the product and everyone is mad every week about the newest blunders. More and more fans are getting skeptical of home-cooking conspiracies and rigging. The league has had multiple primetime nightmares this season alone. What the hell has to happen for them to finally fucking do something? Does a ref have to kill a Detroit Lion on the field in cold blood? Nah, I think the NFL would defend even that. Maybe a ref would have to kill Patrick Mahomes.
I mean…when Kedarius Toney was offsides, Patrick Mahomes basically had a stroke, does that count?
The rise in sports-betting and the awfulness of officiating seem to have some cross-over. I’m not saying it is rigged, but it is suspicious af.
That Cowboys-Lions game had at least 4 really bad calls, that affected key drives. Allen not admitting his mistake in the debacle should get him barred from any major games.
Thing is, officiating has *always* been awful, regardless of the sport. National sports betting has just made the instances more obvious and egregious. That’s not to say betting doesn’t affect officiating in some way – see Tim Donaghy for example – but a lot of calls are just so obviously wrong or bad that “incompetence” is by far the more likely explanation. (You cannot convince me, for example, that MLB’s Angel Hernandez has any motivation for being the worst ump around other than “He is under the delusion that he’s perfect and everyone else is the problem”)
I realize that some officials are awful and they make mistakes. But there is no sky judge or significant repercussions that would prevent the most egregious calls.
Bad officiated has affected the SB and may do it again, considering Dallas may be the #2 seed instead of #5.
I sure hope sports betting does not play a part, but it has been proven numerous times. When there’s smoke…
remember when people celebrated the old refs retiring? man that monkey paw curl is feeling bad right now
Yeah I miss Jeff Triplette too.
The biggest problem with the officiating in the NFL is that there’s zero accountability and zero penalty for blowing games outside of “eh, I guess we won’t let them ref a playoff game.” Which hardly constitutes as anything when you’re working part time. And even then, the crew that just flubbed a nationally televised game with major playoff implications for the NFC will now be officiating a nationally televised game with major playoff implications for the AFC (Steelers-Ravens). Seems more like they’re getting rewarded for being trash than anything else.
I think another minor problem as to why there hasn’t been much done about it is because more often than not the discourse around blown calls often degrades into a victim competition of who has it worse when it comes to officiating. People only seem to care when it’s a bad call that goes against the poor ole Lions against the big, bad Cowboys and don’t raise much of a stink when it’s a case of say, the Packers getting away with a blatant DPI against the Chiefs in a crucial situation. It always ends up leading to the same conclusion of fans claiming that [ insert historically good team here ] receives favorable treatment while the fans of said team throw out a ton of data showing otherwise. All while the officials continue to blow games for everyone else with no repercussions.
Most fans want the proper calls made. The KC-GB game was atrocious officiating. A sky judge would fix most of the major flubs.
I still think an issue is the roughing penalties when guys are going full speed trying to make a play. Steve Young, Randal Cunningham and Mike Vick would crush it even more so in today’s NFL, because a defender slowing up just a bit is often the difference of a first down or winning drive.
Yeah, if you’re past the line of scrimmage, your ass is officially a running back and should be considered as such by the rules.
I agree that most, if not all fans want the officials to be better, but that’s rarely what these conversations actually look like online. It’s almost always “See! [ insert good team here ] always gets the calls! The refs are on their side!” and the whole topic gets derailed.
Now of course, it’s probably just the circles that I tend to talk in, but I’ve literally seen people outright dismiss the blatant DPI in the Chiefs-Packers game because, “It’s KC and they get all the calls anyway.” When you’re constantly surrounded by discourse of that nature, it leads me to think that fans don’t actually want improved officiating. Just biased officiating towards the teams they don’t like. I’m not saying every fan is like this, but when the conversation around officiating almost always turns into a game of who has it worse, it’s hard not to think that way.
We need a Sky Judge, but not in the way that has been proposed before. Proposals I’ve seen for Sky Judge have been for a “Big Man Upstairs,” if you will, with plenary powers to make or to overturn any call. Objections are well-founded—having an off-the-field instant replay review on every play would ruin the flow of the game.
The better way to do Sky Judge is to make him part of the officiating crew, but leave the ultimate power in the hands of the on-field Referee. After plays the refs can get together and confer; the Sky Judge can be one of the guys conferring (via headset), leaving the Referee to make the ultimate call. That would end the obvious blunders (like the tripping call going against Dallas instead of Detroit) without affecting the presentation too much.
No wonder Bob Golic hated Screech for cheering for the refs in Saved By The Bell: The College Years.
Unpopular opinion: I don’t think you can ask Refs to swallow their whistles, even if they’ve been doing it all day. If Refs see a penalty, they have to be empowered to call it. If I’m the league, I’d rather the refs call a penalty that’s maybe a little suspect in retrospect, than purposefully ignore the same kind of penalty.
Ultimately, I think the key is just communication. Dave’s mention of the past two Super Bowls gives me an interesting idea…
Do you think Refs go into halftime and get a report of missed calls and types of missed calls from the first half? Like, I’m not talking about big missed calls like the OPI on that long bomb by the Bengals, but smaller things in muddier parts of the field. It would be interesting if they all got some kind of report that says, “hey, you guys have been missing a lot of holding calls in the middle of the field” or “the hand-fighting on the outside is really grabby and you’ve been missing it”. Then some kind of directive that communicates to them what the proper course of action is AND then communicate that to the teams. Something as simple as “hey, our QA/QC team has been directed to watch holding calls more closely” or “we’re going to keep an eye on LBs over the middle”.
For example, the defensive holding call on Logan Wilson at the end of that Super Bowl didn’t bother me because to my eye it looked soft in slow-motion, but at games peed I thought it was a hold. If the Refs. or someone from the league, would have communicated to the teams at half-time that they were going to be more stringent on things like that, you at least cover yourself and give teams a chance to adjust.
TLDR: Communication b/w the league, refs, and teams is key to improving. Be honest and give all parties a chance to adjust to making calls when you see them.
I agree fully. If it’s a penalty in the 1st, it should be one in the 4th. In addition to your very plausible theory on them getting reports midgame – and I don’t have any specific evidence to back me up on this – but I frequently see articles mentioning “X coach/player was complaining to the refs all game about what they were doing,” or “X coach/player alerted the refs during warmup that the other team likes to do such and such and be on the lookout for it.” Belichick shows up in multiple articles, I’m sure if you look up “Belichick 4d chess ref alert,” SOMETHING will show up.
So if Patrick Mahomes felt like someone kept holding his jersey and no calls come in, he’s gonna mention it to the refs, and the ref might suddenly start watching more closely to see if what Mahomes was saying is true.
For me, the biggest complaints I have about refs are not directly the refs fault. If the NFL made it a full time job, let the refs be more vocal about the situations, as you suggest, and gave them the paid time to study the rules and train more frequently in game speed situations, I think most of the issues would go away.
I fenced foil in college, and during practice we would take turns playing the side judge. Two people, facing each other. Lights on each side of the mats light up when a touch is made. The ONLY thing I needed to figure out was who touched who first, or who had the “right of way.” Sounds simple, right? HARD AS @!#(%@. These guys are watching dynamic plays, with multiple players, all going off at the same time on a ginormous field… I’m honestly less annoyed about how bad the refs are and more annoyed that they aren’t being paid nearly as much as the quarterbacks.
Who will win this year’s Super Refball?
Ref quality is bad but what has made this season truly awful is all the QB injuries. Tom Brady was right
Alternative title: Bad Calls for Suspense and TV Ratings
You nailed it, Brad Allen would have to behead Patrick Mahomes on center field with a machete in order for the NFL to do anything about the league’s officiating. And I’m confident that as long as Goodell’s the commish, that “anything” will continue to be behind-the-scenes reshuffling of the same shit deck and zero accountability for the worst offenders.
Thanks for speaking out on this (again). Maybe they’ll listen to us one day!
And the sad thing is that none of them will be punished for this.