In week 14 of the NFL season, just 15 months after replacement officials made the call that many Packers fans will undoubtedly claim is the biggest injustice in the history of the league, several NFL games had questionable calls by the full-time referees — questionable enough that even Peter King called several to attention in his weekly Monday Morning Quarterback column.
I wasn’t able to watch the entire Vikings/Ravens game on Sunday, but there were two more calls in that game that I saw (and apparently one more that I didn’t) that King could have added to the list — an extremely questionable pass interference call on Chad Greenway late in the game, a chop block call against Joe Berger and the non-reversal of a Toby Gerhart “fumble” that was no more a fumble than I am a Chippendale model.
The Ravens scored a touchdown after the fumble, and scored the game-winning touchdown after the pass interference call.
The calls were bad enough that the league took the rare step of actually calling Vikings head coach Leslie Frazier to discuss the situation — likely an empty gesture for a guy who is probably on his way out after a rough season.
Unfortunately, scrutiny of officials seems to be at an all-time high this season, despite from my highly unscientific eyes, officiating really not being that much worse (aside from the ticky-tack calls around shots to the head, on which refs are in a no-win situation).
The most frustrating part of the entire situation to me, though, is that the league isn’t more forthright about the situation. They don’t publicly admit what fans already know when their guys screw up. Instead, they seem stuck back in the “good old days” before high-definition replay, recording devices and the Internet, when they were able to convince fans their refs were correct by simply ignoring bad calls.
And, it turns out, that the league wouldn’t have to do much to be more public about it. They already have a heck of a system in place for evaluating and training their referees, as evidenced by another Peter King article that I thought was incredible — their Game 150 article chronicled a week in the life of an NFL officiating crew, and the level of work, critique and pressure they go through each and every week.
After reading that piece, I found myself really believing the league does try to fix any problems they see in the officiating of games. And the refs are way better than most fans give them credit for. For the first time in a long time, I don’t necessarily think that the league NEEDS to make their refs full-time to improve the situation (although I still do think that would help, too).
But I do think that making the grading information and process more public — admitting when they make mistakes and informing fans about how they are re making sure it doesn’t happen again — would go a long way toward making fans feel less suspicious that referees are determining the outcome of games and more like their team needs to take better advantage of the opportunities they have to put games away on the field.
And for that, I think everyone would be a winner.
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