NFL notes: Bills owner questions inconsistency of replay review
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Bills owner Terry Pegula questioned the lack of consistency in NFL replay rulings and said the issue needs to be addressed after Buffalo receiver Kelvin Benjamin’s touchdown was overruled in a loss to New England last weekend.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but we have to fix it,” Pegula said Tuesday on Buffalo’s WGR-Radio. “I’m not saying this as the owner of the Bills. I’m saying it as a football fan. We can’t have stuff like this happening in our league.”
One of Pegula’s biggest concerns is whether the league has taken its review process too far in overturning officials’ calls on the field.
“It just wasn’t consistent. Replay was developed by this league to correct obvious mistakes,” Pegula said. “If you’ve got to look at a play 30 times from five different angles and keep looking at it and looking at it and looking at it, you go with the call on the field. It’s what the league’s been doing ever since replay started.
“Obviously, they weren’t looking at the same television the rest of the country was looking at, were they?” he said.
“You know what, you can probably find somebody in this country who disagrees with that. And I know one guy would be (NFL officiating chief) Al Riveron sitting in New York City.”
The NFL declined to comment on what Pegula said.
“Obviously, they weren’t looking at the same television the rest of the country was looking at, were they?”
– BILLS OWNER TERRY PEGULA
Jaguars ‘all in’ to win
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Jaguars coach Doug Marrone has no plans to rest starters in the regular-season finale even though Jacksonville is locked into its playoff seeding.
“We are 100 percent all in on winning this football game,” Marrone said Tuesday.
The Jaguars (10-5) exhausted any chance of getting a first-round bye by losing 44-33 at San Francisco on Sunday.
Regardless of what happens at Tennessee (8-7) on Sunday, Jacksonville will be the No. 3 seed in the AFC and be a playoff host for the first time since the 1999 season.
Although Marrone could rest starters against the Titans, he made it clear Tuesday that won’t happen.
“Make no mistake about it,” he said, “… when the players come in tomorrow, we’re talking about we are going to play to win and do everything we possibly can to win this game. Period.”
Tomlin waits to decide
PITTSBURGH — Mike Tomlin isn’t sure how long of a break he wants to give his star players before the postseason begins.
The Pittsburgh Steelers coach is going to wait to determine how much Ben Roethlisberger, Le’Veon Bell and company play during Sunday’s regular-season finale against winless Cleveland.
The Steelers (12-3) wrapped up their third AFC North title in four years earlier this month and secured a first-round bye by dominating Houston on Christmas night.
A shot at the top seed and homefield advantage in the playoffs remains a possibility, a scenario that relies almost exclusively on the New York Jets beating New England on the road. The Jets have done that only once in the past decade, and that came in 2008 when Tom Brady was out with a knee injury.
Arians claims ‘fake news’
TEMPE, Ariz. — Arizona Cardinals coach Bruce Arians said Tuesday that a report that he and the franchise have agreed to part ways after this season is untrue, labeling it “fake news.”
An article in Pro Football Weekly cited “multiple sources” as saying the split would come next week at the end of Arians’ fifth season as the team’s head coach. But Arians said no decision on future seasons has been made. The 65-year-old coach said he never had met the article’s author and doesn’t know where any supposed meetings on the subject took place.
Arians can become the winningest
coach in franchise history with his 50th victory at Seattle in the season finale Sunday. He is 49-32-1 with the Cardinals, including the postseason. They are 7-8 this season.
Ravens one win away
OWINGS MILLS, Md. — Playing their best football at just the right time, the Baltimore Ravens need only to beat Cincinnati at home Sunday to reach the playoffs for the first time in three years.
Baltimore has won five of six games, the lone flaw in that stretch a 39-38 defeat to AFC North champion Pittsburgh on the road.
So the Ravens (9-6) will enter the finale against the Bengals (6-9) riding a wave of momentum that started with a 23-0 rout in Green Bay on Nov. 19 and extended through last Saturday’s 23-16 win over Indianapolis.
“It’s very important and I’m very happy with it,” coach John Harbaugh said Tuesday. “That’s the idea.”
The NFL moved the Bengals-Ravens game and several others from 1 p.m. to 4:25 to lessen the possibility of matchups becoming meaningless as the day wears on. Though Harbaugh understands the reasoning, that doesn’t mean he likes it.
“I don’t think the NFL did us any favors by moving it back, but they don’t care about us,” the coach said, referring to the notion that ticket-holders who had New Year’s Eve plans now must choose between football and dinner reservations.
“That’s kind of tough for the fans. I’m sure they have New Year Eve’s plans,” Harbaugh said. “I hope our fans are OK with it. I hope they’re into it, I hope people get there. The people that have plans, I hope they give their tickets to somebody else so they get there. I want the place to be packed and loud.”
49ers surge is historic
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — New quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo already has helped the San Francisco 49ers make a bit of history for the NFL’s best in-season turnaround.
No team that ever started a season as poorly as the 49ers did with nine straight losses has ended it as well, Garoppolo having led the team to four straight wins.
The 49ers (5-10) already have the best record of any team that started a 16-game season with a 0-9 record, and they can double the previous best win total held by many teams by winning the season finale Sunday at the division champion Los Angeles Rams (11-4).
“We think we’re playing better. But by no means have we arrived,” coach Kyle Shanahan said Tuesday. “We’ve got a long way to go; we better keep getting better.”
The midseason arrival of Garoppolo in a trade from New England has been just the spark the 49ers needed. He has won all four of his starts for San Francisco, and his 1,250 yards passing are the most by any player in his first four starts for a franchise.
His play has lifted the entire team and the expectations surrounding the 49ers. Running back Carlos Hyde even talked about a possible Super Bowl run in 2018 now that Jimmy G is in place.
“I definitely would want to rein that in,” Shanahan said. “I haven’t spoken to Carlos yet. Just from what I know of Carlos, I have a pretty good feeling that he was halfway joking. But I haven’t seen him yet.
“But definitely that’s not something that we want, because I don’t believe that’s the way you should think. You can’t control what’s going on next year. You only can worry about right now.”
Fox not worrying
LAKE FOREST, Ill. — Chicago Bears coach John Fox insists he is not worrying about his future.
With a 14-33 record in three years, Fox might be coaching his final game for the Bears when they finish the season at NFC North champion Minnesota on Sunday.
Fox said Tuesday he has “never had trouble getting employment in this league” and is “not going to start worrying about it now.”
He would not say if he has had any discussions with management, adding, “Those things are for the offseason.”
The Bears beat winless Cleveland on Sunday after dropping six of seven games. It ensured Fox won’t finish the season with the lowest winning percentage in franchise history. That belongs to Abe Gibron, who was 11-30-1 (.274) from 1972 to 1974.
Texans try to end skid
HOUSTON — The Houston Texans have lost five games in a row for the first time since 2013, and as they prepare for their regular-season finale at Indianapolis they’re trying not to dwell on how disappointing this season has been or look too far ahead.
Coach Bill O’Brien and his team are simply focused on trying to improve and end their skid this week.
“Neither one of us are going to the playoffs, but this is kind of like our playoff game — playoff game right here,” O’Brien said. “Let’s see how we can finish the season and … see if that puts us ending on a good note heading into the offseason.”
The Texans (4-11) failed to make the playoffs this season after winning the AFC South the past two seasons, and it’s the first time in O’Brien’s tenure that they’ll finish with a losing record after going 9-7 in each of his first three years in Houston.
Though there’s little left to play for in this dreadful season marked by injuries to stars Deshaun Watson and J.J. Watt, O’Brien hopes his team will play for pride Sunday and for the opportunity not to finish last in their division for the first time since going 2-14 in 2013. Houston is in third place in the division, one game ahead of the Colts (3-12).
“In the division, you don’t want to end up in last place,” O’Brien said. “It’s very important to go out there and try to win this game and not be in last place, no doubt about it.”
To do that the Texans will have to figure out a way to get their passing game going. They have struggled in that area since Watson was injured in early November, but things have gotten even worse in the two games since third-stringer T.J. Yates has taken over for Tom Savage.
The Texans have managed just 13 points combined in the two games Yates has started. And their passing game, which was among the league’s best with Watson at the helm, has averaged just 105.5 yards a game in the past two weeks.