Saints and Rams: officiating

Krymsonman

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From a fan's perspective, what do you feel is the appropriate level of accountability for a miss like that? Do you only hold the deep official who has primary coverage on that call but due to angle can't always tell the timing of the contact with the location of the ball? The back judge and short wing have secondary coverage and both would have a much better angle on the location of the ball in relation to the contact. Are they all treated the same? The referee is focused on the QB and has no idea what happens downfield. He'll hear the fans booing but they boo all the time. Does he face any accountability?

How much of an impact does the timing of the call make when it comes to accountability? What if that happened midway through the third quarter? Is it any less wrong then? What if the Saints actually stop the Rams on the last drive and win the game or win in OT? Does that change how you hold the official(s) accountable?

If you say they should be fired and never work in the NFL again, what about the DE from the Chiefs who was called for offsides late in their game? His mistake impacted that game just as much as this no-call impacted the NFC game. Should he be cut and never signed by another team as well? It's not a perfect analogy but you can draw parallels.

Keep in mind the officials working yesterday were graded in the top 3 of their position this year and had worked a combined 70 playoff games prior to this week. They had already proven they were the best of the best. Does all that go away because of one really bad judgement error?
If I screw up at work as bad as those refs did, I don't have a job. One of the refs back there had to see the early hit. And this was not one of those "maybe it was, maybe it wasn't" calls. A blind man facing away from the play could have seen this. This was a hard fought game. Both teams played hard, both made good plays and bad plays, but at the most crucial time of the game, in one of the biggest games of the year, a supposedly good group of referees can't make a call on the most obvious penalty I've ever seen. Plays like this are why people think refs are paid off. Fire the whole crew!
 

Krymsonman

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The roughing the passer rule has gotten out of hand in the NFL. I am betting it will not be long before this trickles down to college. The powers that be are patting themselves on the back so it will not change (it may some how get worse). You cannot go high, you cannot go low, and my personal favorite you cannot land on the QB. They are almost eliminating sacks all together.
Hey, it's Tom Brady, you can't touch him at all. He's too valuable. Since the ref was probably behind that play when he made the call, why can't you review that and see that he hit his shoulder pad, not the face. That's only fair. It's like the college targeting rule. They always review that to make sure it was actually targeting.
 

day-day

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A lot of folks wondering why the Saints passed the ball twice at the end of that possession instead of running 3 times to burn clock and score.

The play was perfect and I could not believe no pass interference. Extremely high chance that New Orleans would have won the game if PI had been called. I noticed a lot of times obvious pass interference was ignored in both games yesterday.

Field goals are too easy in NFL (kickers are too good); maybe the target should be narrower.
 

IndyBison

1st Team
Dec 22, 2013
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I think the big challenge to adding fouls like roughing the passer and pass interference to replay is it isn't always this easy and where do you draw the line? Will the call have to become much more technical? If I can freeze it one or two frames before the ball arrives and he makes contact, is it now a foul? Just look at the catch/no catch rules now. They evolved to become that technical because of replay.
I do expect it will happen next year though.

If you think the officials should be fired for one bad call (3 guys would have been involved with this one so all 3 would have to be fired), should the Chiefs cut their DE for lining up in the neutral zone? His mistake cost the Chiefs a trip to the Super Bowl so there is a direct money impact to his employer. The officials' employer is the NFL and they likely don't see any financial impact to their business.

Thanks for your honest thoughts.
 
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B1GTide

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I think the big challenge to adding fouls like roughing the passer and pass interference to replay is it isn't always this easy and where do you draw the line?
You don't - you trust the discretion of the folks in the replay booth just as you are currently trusting the discretion of the guys on the field. Why draw an arbitrary line?

If you think the officials should be fired for one bad call (3 guys would have been involved with this one so all 3 would have to be fired)...
Players and coaches may very well get fired for their mistakes in this game - the one certainty is that the officials will not.
 

CullmanTide

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Jan 7, 2008
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I love that there are saints fans now screaming about a conspiracy. Seriously? Some of these dummies actually think Vegas wanted LA and the Pats to play in the Super Bowl. The poor saints. Was the call wrong? Yes. Does it really matter? No. Should the refs be held accountable for bad calls? Yes. Will they? Nope. Weirdly the commish can overrule the call and make them replay from that point. Newsflash, he won't. Missed calls happen all the time (more than they should). It doesn't matter when it happened or that the game was sort of decided by it. Our national championship game had 2 missed PI calls that cost us points. Should we go back and do that game over? Get over it saints fans, it is done.

I agree with B1G, refs are not like the rest of us normies. We get fired for really bad mistakes. I know I would be. The difference is we get fire if it costs the company money. This will not cost the NFL any money at all.
Most are also LSU fans so...
 

twofbyc

Hall of Fame
Oct 14, 2009
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SIAP, but some were saying no officials would lose their job for this.
Rumor has it VP of officials is on his way out, and Blandino may be taking his place.
Also, talk of review for PI calls (or non calls) is on the agenda for the NFL winter meeting.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 

IndyBison

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Dec 22, 2013
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SIAP, but some were saying no officials would lose their job for this.
Rumor has it VP of officials is on his way out, and Blandino may be taking his place.
Also, talk of review for PI calls (or non calls) is on the agenda for the NFL winter meeting.
Considering Sean Payton is apparently on the competition committee I fully expect it to be strongly considered. I'm not a fan of it, but I do expect it will happen and eventually trickle down to NCAA as well.
 

RTR91

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Considering Sean Payton is apparently on the competition committee I fully expect it to be strongly considered. I'm not a fan of it, but I do expect it will happen and eventually trickle down to NCAA as well.
I don't have a problem with it as long as it's only done by coach's challenge, which is obviously limited to a certain number per game.
 

81usaf92

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I don’t have a problem with challenging certain fouls but not all fouls. Holding is one I feel that shouldn’t be challengable.
 

RTR91

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I don’t have a problem with challenging certain fouls but not all fouls. Holding is one I feel that shouldn’t be challengable.
I think of it this way - if a coach is willing to use one of his limited challenges on a holding call, it's either a big factor in the play or the coach isn't bright.
 

B1GTide

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NFL fined the Rams player for helmet to helmet hit.
They had already admitted that the no-call was an error by the officials, so this is consistent. Now the NFL is saying that they cannot replay the game from the point of that error because it would delay the SB at a huge cost. The reality - they knew it was an error and had the ability to fix it the night of the game. They chose not to correct the mistake when it would have cost the NFL next to nothing - might have even made the NFL more money. All they had to do was play the next night.

So. this was not about money. The NFL just doesn't care about its fans. It thinks that it can do anything and the fans will stick, and they are probably right.
 

AlistarWills

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That rule about replaying was likely put in place years before TV deals, the show that is the Super Bowl and all that surrounds it. We had to know they wouldn’t do any sort of replaying the game. It would get in the way of “everything else” too much.

I wonder if the players from the Saints filed a class action suit with the NFL over lost NFC Championship winner money and potential Super Bowl bonus money and anything in their specific contracts tied to the same, what would happen. The NFL has admitted guilt already. I’m not sure how they could defend themselves in court. I don’t know if anything like this is even possible but it’s something to muse about.
They had already admitted that the no-call was an error by the officials, so this is consistent. Now the NFL is saying that they cannot replay the game from the point of that error because it would delay the SB at a huge cost. The reality - they knew it was an error and had the ability to fix it the night of the game. They chose not to correct the mistake when it would have cost the NFL next to nothing - might have even made the NFL more money. All they had to do was play the next night.

So. this was not about money. The NFL just doesn't care about its fans. It thinks that it can do anything and the fans will stick, and they are probably right.
 

B1GTide

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That rule about replaying was likely put in place years before TV deals, the show that is the Super Bowl and all that surrounds it. We had to know they wouldn’t do any sort of replaying the game. It would get in the way of “everything else” too much.

I wonder if the players from the Saints filed a class action suit with the NFL over lost NFC Championship winner money and potential Super Bowl bonus money and anything in their specific contracts tied to the same, what would happen. The NFL has admitted guilt already. I’m not sure how they could defend themselves in court. I don’t know if anything like this is even possible but it’s something to muse about.
The seasons ticket holders sued, which is how we found out their reasoning for not playing the game over from that point.

I agree that the players should sue for their bonuses. They should sue for the entire amount of bonuses, to include the bonus for winning the SB because the NFL took away their ability to earn that bonus. The NFL would have to pay given their reasoning offered in the other suit. They have painted themselves into a corner.
 

RTR91

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Pretty sure the rule Michael Thomas cited as the reason the NFL could have the game replayed from that moment doesn't apply here. Link

Article 2 The authority and measures provided for in this entire Section 2 do not constitute a protestmachinery for NFL clubs to avail themselves of in the event a dispute arises over the result of a game. Theinvestigation called for in this Section 2 will be conducted solely on the Commissioner’s initiative to review an act or occurrence that he deems so extraordinary or unfair that the result of the game in question would be inequitable to one of the participating teams. The Commissioner will not apply his authority in cases of complaints by clubs concerning judgmental errors or routine errors of omission by game officials. Games involving such complaints will continue to stand as completed.
We all know DPI is a judgement call, so the NFL admitting the call was wrong doesn't really change things here.
 

DzynKingRTR

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I heard on the radio this morning that someone tried to show an image that showed the ball was tipped at the line. The image for that was inconclusive, but what it did show was a hold by the saints and hands to the face by the saints. Apparently, the call should have been offsetting and replayed the down.
 

IndyBison

1st Team
Dec 22, 2013
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Pretty sure the rule Michael Thomas cited as the reason the NFL could have the game replayed from that moment doesn't apply here. Link

We all know DPI is a judgement call, so the NFL admitting the call was wrong doesn't really change things here.
Most of the articles I've seen about the commissioner's ability to replay a game only list articles 1 and 3. They often exclude article 2 which clearly states he didn't have that authority in this case. I'm not sure what would constitute a calamity to invoke this rule. Maybe spiking the Gatorade of the other team at the start of the 4th quarter or a massive earthquake that prevented the game from continuing (start over rather than pick up from where it stopped).
 

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