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You seem to put a lot of trust in the NFL that when it stands by a call it does so because it's right, so I thought I would share this with you from another call that went against Dallas.
http://www.wfaa.com/article/sports/...crucial-penalty-against-cowboys/287-388418547
There are two possibilities here. Either the NFL didn't admit its mistake privately and those who told Lombardi that it did were lying (or Lombardi was), or the NFL privately admitted its mistake but wouldn't admit it publicly. If the second one is true, then why should we believe the NFL would publicly admit that Bryant caught the ball or that it shouldn't have overturned the call because there wasn't indisputable evidence?
I'm not a conspiracy theory. I don't believe the league is out to get us. But I certainly believe that officials rally to defend their own even when they are wrong. It isn't just officials, though, as a journalist, I've seen this happen in multiple professions where there is a lot of public scrutiny. You get an us vs. them mentality that colors your perception. This is how officials can use the standard of a reach in one instance, but when there's a reach (and it's acknowledged since Steratore and Blandino both said Dez reached), change the standard to a lunge.
And if you don't feel that a reach is the standard for an act common to the game, then here's one of the officiating experts you quote saying it is in addressing an indisputable evidence issue and the need to change the catch rule: http://touchdownwire.usatoday.com/2...ls-out-abandoning-clear-and-obvious-standard/
Mike Pereira ✔ @MikePereira
Make it like a catch on an upright receiver. If you get control and two feet or another today body part on the ground and then reach or lunch, you have made a football move, they it should be a catch. Replay can only review the control and two feet. Not the FB move. Credit PFT.
Anyway, this is my last-ditch effort ... really, it is. From now on, I'm going to focus on how I'm happy that the NFL at least is trying to fix this mess of a catch rule to hopefully make it less subjective.
That Butler Unsportsmanlike Conduct penalty nixing a 22 yard pass play and adding 15 penalty yards was a forty yard swing in what was, what, a 7-3 game at the time? In a home playoff game?
I'm not a conspiracy guy either, but that killed what would otherwise probably have been a scoring drive in a game that was 21-3 a few minutes later. It was a back-breaker. Hard to get emotional invested in these games when so much turns on bad calls, and bad calls happen so often.