‘We need better refs’
Collins, Giants fume after questionable call lifts Panthers
CHARLOTTE — Pat Shurmur, Landon Collins and the Giants had a legitimate argument Sunday that Jerome Boger and the officiating crew cost them this game.
And they made that argument. Oh, did they ever.
An unthinkable unnecessary roughness call against Collins early in the fourth quarter completely bailed out a Panthers offense being smothered in the second half. And no one could explain the rationale behind the call.
Collins dove and broke up a Cam Newton pass on 3rd-and-13 and in the process collided with Panthers receiver Devin Funchess, who was leaning forward back to the ball. The flags went flying, and with them so did the Giants’ tempers, after Carolina scored a touchdown on that drive to go up 11 with 11:21 remaining in the game.
“We need better refs,” both Collins and Janoris Jenkins told reporters in separate interviews.
“We’re fighting and trying to figure out how to play football. It’s not football anymore,” Collins said.
“I can take a loss... to have a win stolen is a different type of feeling,” Damon Harrison tweeted. “The NFL has some explaining to do.”
“The mood is we need better refs,” Collins told The Athletic. “That’s the mood. Point-blank, simple. It’s bogus calls being called out there.”
Shurmur basically shouted: “What I saw was a guy going for the ball, making an effort, I think he touched the ball if I’m not mistaken. I saw that with my own eyes. So a guy is making a play on the ball with no attempt, no attempt to target the receiver. So that’s how I saw it. I’m sure somebody will see it in slow-mo HD and someone will tell me what they think.”
Collins also took issue with a reporter saying it was a helmetto-helmet hit.
“It wasn’t helmet to helmet. Please don’t say helmet to helmet,” he said. “I did not touch his helmet. His helmet touched my back. I hit the ball first … (It was) the momentum changer, changed the whole influence of the game, gave them a first down, put them in field goal range and within range to be able to score (a touchdown). It’s just not right.”
Collins would hit Cam Newton to force an interception to Jenkins on the next Panthers drive, the Giants’ second INT after Curtis Riley had picked off Newton in the third quarter. But then the officials got the Giants defense again:
When a Panthers holding call on first down with eight minutes left was about to back Carolina up deep into their own territory, Giants defensive lineman Kerry Wynn was called for roughing the passer for a hard but legal hit on Newton. The penalties offset, and the Panthers proceeded to kick a field goal to go up 30-24 with 2:16 to play.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” Wynn said. “And after the game you’ve got to watch the tape because you may not get a flag for it but you could still get a FedEx. So what do you do? … I hate to cost the team a penalty but I really don’t think that was one.”
Interestingly, Boger’s crew is the one that came to the Giants’ camp this offseason and spent time educating and informing the team on new rules and emphases. Now here they were on Sunday, killing the visiting team with bad calls.
Even on the Giants’ final drive, on 3rd-and-1 with 30 seconds to play, Christian McCaffrey rushed and the officials gave him the first down, but on the TV broadcast it appeared McCaffrey was short, and Harrison confirmed that.
“I think they jumped the gun a bit,” Harrison said. “From where I was, I don’t think it was a first down. It was short.”
The Giants’ defense, of course, was not able to stop the Panthers from driving 30 yards in the final 1:08 to set up Graham Gano’s game-winning 63-yard field goal, primarily due to a 20-yard pass to rookie receiver D.J. Moore with Jenkins closest in coverage.
Still, after Alec Ogletree said referees in the Week 4 loss to the Saints told him they’d make a different call in the Super Bowl than in the regular season, Sunday’s calls were too much for the Giants to take.
They’d had enough.