An Unbiased look at last night's officiating from......

[NoCalMike]

the local Sacramento sports radio guys.

Basically they said that there is NO conspiracies in the NFL officiating, however it is officiating jobs like last night that fuel the fire for people to say that the league leans towards certain teams. They said basically that the new PI rules must not have been in effect last night, and that the PI call on Harris was pathetic. They also said Rod pushed off on the final catch, howevever, they also said Roy Williams should have been flagged for hitting a defenseless receiver since Gardner was basically on the ground, and then Roy comes diving in, helmet first looking to hurt another player. They also talked about poor clock management by the SKins, but overall I thought this was a pretty good analysis by 2 guys that have no reason whatsoever to be bias one way or another.

[afparent]

I cannot remember a game where this many bad calls have been brought up over and over again (and I am not talking about his board). On sportsradio, TV, over and over again. Usually it is one play, but last night there was many

[illone]

Yea, only college football has this many bad, game changing calls on a regular basis. Where did they get these refs from, the SEC? :laugh:

[JerseyGator]

Last night's game paled in comparison to last years UF-FSU game, where at least one neutral observer calcuated that calls favored FSU to the tune of 35 points. It set the standard for ref corruption everywhere and allowed FSU to earn millions in a BCS bowl game.

[ljer]

Originally posted by afparent

I cannot remember a game where this many bad calls have been brought up over and over again (and I am not talking about his board). On sportsradio, TV, over and over again. Usually it is one play, but last night there was many

Monday Night Football....the whole country saw it.

[Pocono]

Originally posted by NoCalMike

the local Sacramento sports radio guys.

Basically they said that there is NO conspiracies in the NFL officiating, however it is officiating jobs like last night that fuel the fire for people to say that the league leans towards certain teams. They said basically that the new PI rules must not have been in effect last night, and that the PI call on Harris was pathetic. They also said Rod pushed off on the final catch, howevever, they also said Roy Williams should have been flagged for hitting a defenseless receiver since Gardner was basically on the ground, and then Roy comes diving in, helmet first looking to hurt another player. They also talked about poor clock management by the SKins, but overall I thought this was a pretty good analysis by 2 guys that have no reason whatsoever to be bias one way or another.

What are they talking about. Gardner was upright with the freakin ball in his hands and if he steps out of bounds the clock stops and the game gets tied. Williams made a great play coming over the defender Gardner pushed away in order to make the catch and planted Gardner hard before he had a chance to step out of bounds. He dove because he had to dive to get over the player Gardner illegally pushed away. There's plenty of calls to complain about in that game but to paint a player on his feet with the ball and the game on the line as defenseless is ridiculous IMO.

[TheDane]

Pocono is right. It was technically a clean hit by Williams on Gardner. Williams certainly didn't need to lead with his helmet, but that's the way he plays and its the message he tries to send. Gardner certainly wasn't defenseless, and it's very arguable that he was still able to make a play at the time he got hit.

If Sean Taylor got flagged for the same play, we'd be up in arms.

[Fifty Gut]

I may change my license plates from "F TUNA" to "F OFFCLS".

[TheDane]

Originally posted by Mittens

I may change my license plates from "F TUNA" to "F OFFCLS".

:laugh:

Who's CLS? And why are you hating on him?

[Ghost of]

Actually "leading" with the helmet isn't the problem.

It's the fact that he made it a helmet to helmet hit. you don't need to be defenseless for that to be a flag.

[Tarhog]

And there's a good reason for that rule.

Back in the day, when helmet to helmet hits weren't banned, you didn't have 250-300 lb players who could sever your spinal cord with a vicious hit. Look at the # of severe injuries (Rich Gannon's fractured vertebra just the latest) this year alone.

I'm personally glad the rule exists, and they should call it every time it happens. When we see a career-ending injury to a Redskin as a result of that kind of hit, there won't be any debate about whether its a good rule or not.

I would buy off on different penalties for a 'blatant' vs. 'incidental' use of the helmet, like they do with the face mask penalty, as sometimes its clear a defender is leading and does it with purpose, while other times its much more borderline.

[TheDane]

Ghost and Tarhog, it did not seem to me that Williams went helmet-to-helmet the way, say, John Lynch has done in the past. Williams was going for the big hit, Gardner was stepping/falling backwards, and you got a little highly engineered plastic-on-plastic. Hot Rod was looking up and aware of the situation. There wasn't apparent malicious intent, and this was not a missile-from-the-side helmet-to-helmet (dash-dash-dash) hit. It looked like a legitimate hit to me.