When it comes to improving refereeing, the NFL has typically exhibited a toxic combination of cheapness and stubbornness. Last night’s USFL playoff game between Pittsburgh and Michigan revealed the folly of one of those traits.
Late in the fourth quarter, with the Maulers leading the Panthers 20-17, Michigan took the lead with a 55-yard touchdown pass.
But there was a penalty. The officials called out Michigan right tackle Josh Dunlap for a foul on the face mask, which ended the score.
Enter the Heavenly Judge. Mike Pereira watched the game and found there was no foul on the face mask. (He appeared to have grabbed the edge of the jersey, but it was clearly not a face mask foul.) The penalty was overturned and the touchdown restored.
That’s significant because there wouldn’t have been a similar solution in the NFL. Calls and non-face mask calls cannot be screened. In an NFL postseason game, the late touchdown that led to a lead change would have been wiped out with no way to correct the umpire’s clear and obvious error.
“I hope some NFL decision makers are watching this game because what Mike Pereira did to clean up that decision to ensure the decision was correct at the critical moments of a division game to earn championship game rights, just makes the game so much better,” NBC analyst Jason Garrett said after the sequence of events was revealed. “And it’s a simple mechanism. Mike Pereira and the crew handled it right. And there is justice. That’s something the NFL should focus on.”
Given the age of betting legalization, justice is twofold. It applies to the outcome of the games – and it applies to the outcome of bets on the games.
At a time when the NFL needs to be much more concerned about the impact of direction on game outcomes and the outcome of betting on games, the NFL must use every means at its disposal to quickly and efficiently remedy errors. “Shit happens” is not enough to explain official error, especially when so much money depends on the basic assumption that: (1) officials are doing everything right; and (2) the league will have something on hand to fix issues when they don’t.
The NFL is known to be reactive, not proactive. Because gambling lures so many wolves to the NFL’s door, and the league welcomes some of them in the name of further ownership accumulation, the NFL needs to spend the money it needs to identify and fix any potential problems before they do happen and not after.
Far too often the league feigns surprise when a rule or approach that should have been established leads to an unfair outcome. And then the league promptly tries to fix the problem.
Or he tries to fix the problem and fails like the league did after the Saints were misled by apparent but unannounced passing errors in the 2018 NFC Championship.
Ultimately, this experience left the league seemingly paralyzed out of fear of unintended consequences and/or general incompetence. But when it comes to a bigger scandal, the various lawmakers, regulators and prosecutors won’t accept: “We knew this could be a problem, but we were reluctant to fix it because we weren’t sure we could solve it.” .” in the right way, so we just lived with it.”
It’s a reckless and stupid approach. And nobody in the league’s power structure seems to take it seriously. If so, are they not taking it seriously enough, or the NFL would already be using the process used by the USFL on Saturday night to fix an error that would otherwise have affected the outcome of a playoff game.
Sure, Pittsburgh still won. But they won the game through their positive efforts on the field – not through the negative consequences of a “human error” that those in charge of the sport were unwilling to correct.
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