NFL Referees a Joke

Two calls in this weekends games were totally bogus. The most egregious, and ultimately damaging, was against my team, the New England Patriots. Granted, the Patriots played more than bad enough to lose the game, but the pass interference call against Patriots cornerback Asante Samuel was just inexcusable. Pass interference calls in general can be so damaging to a team, and are so subjective that they need to be reserved for clear violations. This play could have just as easily been called offensive interference, and certainly should not have been called in a game of this magnitude. The fact that it was called on a late flag coming from a back judge (Gregory Steed), and not the side judge nearest the play, really brings into question the motives of this ref. The Broncos got the ball on the one yard line, went on to score, and then caused another fumble on the ensuing kickoff. Primarily because of that bogus play, the Patriots went from a 3-0 lead, to a 10-3 deficit at halftime.

Another non-call came in the second half, when Champ Bailey interception Brady in the endzone, and returned the ball 100 yards, before being knocked out of bounds on the one yard line. Belichick claimed the ball was fumbled, went out of the endzone, and was therefore the Patriots ball on their 20 yard line. What Belichick was claiming was a little hard to understand at the time, but upon reading more about the rule, he was clearly right. There unfortunately was no camera angle that definitively showed where the ball landed.

A call in the Colts-Steelers game was even more appalling because it was called correctly on the field, and then incorrectly reversed. This call even led to an admission by the NFL that the call was bogus. Many other strange occurrences in the final 2 minutes led to a Steelers win, making the bad call moot.