NFL Week 11 Awful Officiating Recap

My favorite comment that I've read so far today over at PFT:

Reason #1 not to gamble on sports — the officials don’t know the rules.

Reason #2 is the previous post — the athletes don’t know the rules.

Commenter "Favre2012" is of course referring to the Steelers and Eagles games today one was full of horrible officiating, and the other... well... had a quarterback who simply doesn't know the rules of the game. Side note - this is the 2nd time in 3 weeks where both Steelers and Eagles games were affected by bad calls.

Starting with the Steelers game - the first sign of awful officiating was the clear bias in favor of the Chargers. The pentalties for the game were 2-5 for the Chargers and 13-115 for the Steelers. Then on the final play of the game, the illegal foward pass that wasn't illegal but was called illegal happened preventing the Steelers from scoring a touchdown that would have made the final score 17-11 or 18-11 depending on whether or not they made them kick the extra point. An hour after the game referee Scott Green admitted the wrong call was made:

“The rule was misinterpreted,” Green said. “We should have let the play go through in the end, yes. It was misinterpreted that instead of killing the play we should have let the play go through.”

In case you're interested in watching the video... here is a quick recap of the final 5 seconds:


On to the Eagles game... Donovan Mcnabb - a 10 year veteran, a 31 year old Quarterback, didn't know a game could end in a tie. I agree this is a dumb rule, but seriously, how does he not know this?? He goes on to ask the even dumber question: "What if this happens in the Super Bowl or Playoffs?" Does he really want us to answer that question without making him feel like the biggest retard in all of sports?

The biggest bad call in the Eagles game was the roughing the passer (leading with the helmet) call on Shelden Brown with less than a minute left in OT that setup the field goal attempt for the Bengals. It was a bad call - ticky tack - and bad for the game. Thankfully for the sake of officials affecting the outcome of the game, the kick was wide right. Now someone give Donovan a rule book to take home!

Lastly, PFT also reported about an incident in the Vikings / Bucs game involving some late hits by the Vikings:

Vikings defensive end Ray Edwards delivered an absolutely brutal late hit to Buccaneers quarterback Jeff Garcia, drilling him long after Garcia had thrown the ball. Edwards was flagged for roughing the passer and will definitely be fined, and it’s possible that the NFL will rule the hit blatant enough to merit a suspension.

They later go on to say that Mike Carey had to even issues warnings (ala the mlb) to both benches:

FOX’s Chris Myers reports from the sidelines of the Vikings-Bucs game that referee Mike Carey has told both teams to cool it with the hits after the whistle.

Update: TBL makes a good point: If the Steelers-Chargers Finish Had Happened in the NBA, It’d Be a Massive Controversy
Yes... and most likely an investigation from Congress. Stern has to be fuming that Goodell can get away with this unscathed in the public eye.

One final note... 100 million dollars wagered LEGALLY on THIS game!!! You have got to be kidding me! 64 million dollars swung from one side to the other when the call was overturned! Laughable! Folks - please, take a small portion of your gambling money and click on the link in the top right corner to help support orphans in India - they could use it. They are suffering! Please, use your money wisely!

To conclude... we go back to the commenter "Favre2012":
Reason #1 not to gamble on sports — the officials don’t know the rules.

Image via Fanhouse