WE BLEW IT
NFL admits refs blew key call in Packers’ victory over Lions
Whether you’re a Lions fan, Packers fan, or just a fan of football, Monday night’s game thrust one issue the NFL has been facing all season into the national spotlight: the officiating is awful.
The game was highlighted by two phantom “illegal hands to face” penalties on Lions defensive end Trey Flowers that gave the Packers two automatic first downs. The first came early in the fourth qurter and negated a sack of Aaron Rodgers and ultimately led to a Packer TD. The second came on a thirdand-4 late in the fourth quarter that allowed the Packers to kill the clock and kick a gamewinning 23-yard field goal as time expired. Picking up that penalty wouldn’t have guaranteed a win for the Lions, but at the very least Detroit could have gotten the ball back to attempt a comeback drive.
Tuesday, NFL executive VP Troy Vincent said refs got the first call right and the second one wrong.
Here is how the lead official for Monday night’s crew explained the calls, based on a pool report.
“The umpire threw both of them,” Clete Blakeman said. “The last one was really the only one I’ve discussed with him. Basically, it’s for illegal use of the hands, hands-tothe-face foul. To be a foul, we basically need some forceful contact that’s prolonged to the head and neck area of the defender. So, in his mind he had pinned him back, it was prolonged, and that’s what created the foul.”
The Packers also had some calls go against them, including a phantom holding call on rookie guard Elgton Jenkins that resulted in a 10-yard penalty. The NFL has been dealing with poor officiating all season and it’s finally reached the point where it needs to officiate its officials.
For whatever reason, the NFL suspended its program that would make referees fulltime employees during the summer. With the amount of influence referees have over the game, it would be wise for the NFL to have these people extensively trained before they get on the field and shift the outcomes of games. The sample size of an NFL season is already so small that having
external influences, like officials, really doesn't help fans, players or coaches get the most that they want out of the games. It's not like the NFL is exactly hurting for money: the league reportedly made $8.78 billion in revenue for the 2018-19 fiscal year.
Of course, being an NFL official is not an easy job. We're talking about very large human beings moving at a rapid pace all over the field. There are going to be missed calls on plays that happen in fractions of a second, but that doesn't mean viewers of the sport shouldn't expect the referees to do a better job.
There might not be a singular solution to this. One way would be making every call on the field eligible for a review, like the league has already done with pass interference calls — but even that might not fix the officiating woes. Twenty four of the last 25 pass interference calls have stuck with the original call on the field, according to Kevin Seifert of ESPN. If that ability was expanded to all the penalties on the field, the already slow pace of NFL games would get muddied even further.