Garrett's flag throwing a symptom

[CouchCoach]

What happened Sunday with that ref was just the symptom, the cause was set in motion at the owners' meeting when Garrett is credited with making the "integrity of the NFL" speech that helped get this made a reviewable penalty. The ultimate judgment call a ref can make in any game gets the word "integrity" attached to it? Think that's going to sit well with a bunch of guys that get dirty looks, yelled at by coaches and booed by fans?

He singled himself out and was evidently impressive in his impassioned plea to make this reviewable but make no mistake about it. When that ref yelled angrily at him to "throw your flag", he was yelling for more than himself.

There are some issues behind the scenes because if you pay attention, the play by play and color guys are going out of their way to point out when an official makes a good call at real time speed, which is really hard to do. I do think the imbalance of questioning calls without giving credit and the recent knee jerks by the committee and owners on single plays resulting in rule changes has put the officials, as a group, in a somewhat adversarial role and that ref yelling at Garrett was yelling for a lot of his fellow refs.

 

[Creeper]

It was a dumb penalty and the refs should not have thrown the flag. Its not like JG is a weekly problem on the sidelines. If anything he is too nice. That was a terrible No catch call by the refs which forced JG to use his last challenge. Of course he should be mad, especially since the other team was making him look stupid.

When people use that excuse that refs have to make these calls in real time so its tougher I want to scream. Yes, if the refs were watching it on a TV screen in real time, even super High Def, at 60 fps the calls would be tougher. But watching it live, with humans eyes in 3 dimensions actually makes it easier than a guy looking at his TV. The human eye has the benefit of perfect resolution, no frame rate, 3 dimensions and memory replay with intelligence (theoretically). The ref is closer to the play too. What refs need to do is stop allowing players to make the calls. After the Cooper catch, the Packers started waving like he was out of bounds. The refs fell for it. I always felt it should be unsportsmanlike conduct for a player to make a refs call after a play. Let the refs call it like they see it and if they don't see it, don't call it.

There is an inherent problem with the replay rules. If the intent is to get the calls right, then there should be no limit to the number of replays. A coach has no idea how many times the refs are going to screw up so its impossible to make a logical decision when to call for a replay. He can only do it when he sees a bad call. He has no idea the refs will make 2 or 3 more bad calls. JG had to use his replay on that play because it was clearly a bad call on a big gain play. But the interference on Gallup before the interception was even worse. That JG had no replays left should not mean that an egregious call should stand. A coach should get two replays of his own, but the booth ref should be able to replay any play he chooses as well. I know some people say it will slow down the game. Maybe, but the game is being crushed by commercial breaks not instant replays. Fans will tolerate the additional replay stoppages if it helps get the calls right.