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

Super Bowl Ref Mike Carey Almost Blew Whistle

The most talked about play in the Super Bowl, which I guess is simply known as "The Play", almost didn't even happen according to head official Mike Carey. In an article in the New York Daily News (found via the fanhouse) Carey says:

"radar was definitely up, because I knew a sack, or at least grasp and control, was imminent,"

"It didn't quite happen," Carey said. "But boy it was close."

"I anticipated a sack,"

The article goes on to say...

Carey saw enough to be convinced that Manning's forward momentum never stopped. If it had, he would've had to blow the whistle and declare Manning "in the grasp and control" of the Patriots defense, which would've ended the play and resulted in a drive-crippling sack.

As we've mentioned before, thankfully Carey kept the whistle silent and let the play happen. I haven't heard anyone say that Carey made the wrong call, but I've heard some say that they wouldn't have blamed him or faulted him if he did blow the play dead. I can't imagine the outcry we'd be hearing if Eli launches that ball and Tyree catches it only to find out that Carey had blown the play dead.

By the way - considering the Giants amazing run to a thrilling Super Bowl victory, you have to wonder if college football still thinks their system is better. The NFL just set record setting ratings, and I seriously have to imagine that as popular as college football is, if they could somehow figure out a way to put together a ligitimate playoff system, they could see similar ratings from over time.

Mike Carey - Ref Grade

I said a few weeks back that I thought Mike Carey was a great official, and all he did last night was back up that statement. He and his crew were on top of their game last night, and there were only a few minor calls that were either missed or called wrong. While breaking down the officials over at fanhouse, MDS said this:

"Unlike many big games of this NFL season, people aren't talking about the officials today. Referee Mike Carey and his crew had a good game, and they deserve a lot of credit today.

Yes, some will nitpick individual calls. Giants receiver Amani Toomer maybe should have been called for offensive pass interference on his 38-yard catch in the second quarter. The Patriots shouldn't have had to challenge the Giants' 12 men on the field penalty; that was a call that the official on the sideline should have seen. Carey seemed awfully quick on the draw to call a delay of game penalty against the Giants."

The biggest missed call in my opinion, was the push off by Toomer. That play was followed up though by an Eli Manning interception a few plays later so it didn't really matter.

Another call that could be questioned was the fumble that appeared to be recovered by the Patriots, but then Ahmad Bradshaw overturned the Pats defender and literally stripped the ball out of his hand. But I can understand the officials having to give that to the Giants after clearing up the pile and finding that a Giants player has the ball. That's just strength against strength and Bradshaw won that battle.

Bottom line - as MDS said - we're not talking about the officials today, and for Carey and crew... that's a win!

Penalties for the game:
Giants (4-36)
Patriots (5-35)

I'd say a fair game for sure! I give them an A (not a plus, but not a minus, a solid A)

Playoff Ref Roundup

To recap the Playoffs, here were the Refs that called each game:

Wild Card Weekend:
Jacksonville @ Pittsburgh - Scott Green
Tennessee @ San Diego - Ed Hochuli
Washington @ Seattle - Walt Coleman
New York @ Tampa Bay - Walt Anderson

Divisional Playoff Weekend:
Seahawks @ Green Bay - Mike Carey
Jaguars @ Patriots - Jerome Boger
Chargers @ Colts - Gerald Austin
Giants @ Cowboys - Peter Morelli

Championship Game Weekend:
Chargers @ Patriots - Jeff Triplette
Giants @ Packers - Terry McAulay

Super Bowl
Giants vs. Patriots - Mike Carey

Mike Carey wins the award for Ref with the best merits. I'm not sure exactly what those merits are, but he is lucky one who was chosen. Interesting point made by commenter "Milehigh", last year's head official during the Super Bowl, Tony Corrente, was not even chosen for one playoff game. His 2007 crew was the exact same as his 2006 crew except they had a different side judge. Doug Toole was his side judge during 2006, where as in 2007 Corrente's sude judge was Dyrol Prioleau. It looks like 2007 was Prioleau's first year in the league. 6 other regular officials also did not work a playoff game. They are:

Bill Carollo - 18 yrs experience
Bill Leavy - 12 yrs experience
Larry Nemmers - 22 yrs experience
John Parry - 7 yrs experience
Gene Staratore - 4 yrs experience
Ron Winter - 12 yrs experience
and, of course...
Tony Corrente - 12 yrs experience

Mike Carey... Super Bowl XLII Referee

NFL.com is reporting that for the first time in history, there will be an african american heading the officiating crew for a Super Bowl.

Mike Carey was notified today that he has been given the assignment of a lifetime on February 3rd, 2008.

In the NFL.com report, it says the officials for the Super Bowl are chosen on merit, with the highest ranked at each position getting the assignment.

Over at refchat, they have analyzed Carey's stats for the season:

In the regular season, Mike was a good referee for visiting teams. Home teams only won 40% of their games with Mike's crew, which was second-worst of the 17 referee crews.

Mike was 6th (of 17) in total points scored per game (45.0), 4th in visitors' points (23.5) and 12th in home team points (21.5).

Mike was middle of the pack (9th) in penalties per game at 11.8. Ranked 10th in penalty yards per game (90 yards per game). Ranked near the bottom (14th) in average penalty yards per penalty at 7.6. Mike was tied for the highest in the percent of his games where the visiting team had more penalties called than the home team (70%). He is not the only referee where most games had more penalties called against the visiting team yet the visiting teams did well in his games. The same quality of usually more penalties called against the visiting teams yet the visiting teams nevertheless usually winning the games also applied to Ron Winter this year.

Well, we know there are no "home" or "away" teams in the Super Bowl so those stats shouldn't mean too much in Arizona. The stat that stood out to me was the fact that Mike and crew averaged only 11.9 penalties per game - couple that with the fact that the Giants and Pats are averaging a combined 8.7 penalties per game in the playoffs and we're looking at a possible low number of penalties for the Super Bowl. In my opinion, that's a good thing.

As I have mentioned before, Carey is one of my favorite officials, and I think he does a fairly good job on the games that I have seen him officiate. However, every official can have bad games and of course they need to have a good team behind them as well. As we saw just 2 years ago when the Seahawks played the Steelers, just because you may have had the best merit's during the regular season, doesn't mean you will call a great game during the Super Bowl.

Carey has been a Super Bowl alternate many times, but has never been the referee.