Plankton
Well-Known Member
- Messages
- 12,424
- Reaction score
- 19,114
https://defector.com/how-nfl-teams-scout-the-refs/
Ramon George is lined up 15 yards behind the line of scrimmage, a little to the left of Dak Prescott. As the umpire, George’s job is to watch the center, left guard, and left tackle for false starts, and after a running play he’s the one who will spot the ball. But neither George nor the Niners defense are expecting a run here. The Cowboys are down 23-17 on the Niners’ 41 with 14 seconds left in the game. San Francisco defenders crowd the sidelines. They aren’t planning on letting Dallas get out of bounds to stop the clock.
But Dallas does run. With only three Niners left in the box, Prescott takes a wide-open lane and runs 17 yards, sliding to the ground with nine seconds left. The Cowboys’ offensive linemen hurriedly stumble to their positions and Prescott and his center set the ball on the ground, seemingly forgetting that the next play cannot start until an official touches the ball.
Four seconds left. George comes sprinting in from the backfield and he squeezes his way—just barely—through the A gap between the center and the right guard. George is blocked by the big linemen and he uses both hands to push the center out of his way so he can touch the football and place it on the ground for the official spot. He backpedals into the defense as the clock runs out.
Niners defenders stand up and point at Prescott, realizing they’ve just won the wild card game.
“Oh my gosh!” Tony Romo shouts on the CBS broadcast. Jim Nantz yells, “The official gets in the way and the game is over! The game is over!”
“The umpire has to touch the ball, of course that’s ridiculous for a game to end like that, Jim!” Romo says.
I couldn’t stop thinking about this play. I watched George elbow his way through the offensive line over and over again. He’s running so fast until he thuds against a wall of giant humans who will not let him through. This was a situation where an official impacted the game without even making a decision that anyone could argue with. Was the play-call to blame? Or the Cowboys players? And how much did George’s actions matter here? I couldn’t let it go, so the next week, I called an NFL game management coach to help me understand what went so wrong.
This coach was shocked by the play-call. He explained that their team wouldn’t have run that play without more time on the clock, because however long they think they have, everything goes faster and smoother in practice, where equipment staffers who know what the play is are standing in for the officials. I expected that. But what he said next surprised me.
“The crazy thing is that Ramon George is the fittest umpire in the NFL,” this coach said. “He’s in the best shape of any of them. So if he couldn’t keep up with this play, who could have?”
Wait a second, I interrupted. How do you know he’s the fittest?
“I know who trains each official,” the coach told me. “I know where they went to school, I know what kind of shape they are in. I know everything about them.”
This coach watches every play of every game to see how the officials move and react. He tracks how long crews take between plays to know how to time out end-of-game scenarios, and they give a scouting report to players on each official’s athletic capabilities. If the official is older, they’ll instruct players to hand them the ball to make it quicker and easier for them to spot the ball. And in the case of this Dallas play, the coach said they could tell that the Cowboys staff didn’t give George a heads-up on what they’d be doing on the play, or George would have been following more closely behind it.
I knew teams scouted their opponents with obsessive levels of detail, but I didn’t know they scouted the officiating crews just as closely.
“The Dallas play is exactly why teams scout officials,” this coach told me. “This is exactly why.”
Ramon George is lined up 15 yards behind the line of scrimmage, a little to the left of Dak Prescott. As the umpire, George’s job is to watch the center, left guard, and left tackle for false starts, and after a running play he’s the one who will spot the ball. But neither George nor the Niners defense are expecting a run here. The Cowboys are down 23-17 on the Niners’ 41 with 14 seconds left in the game. San Francisco defenders crowd the sidelines. They aren’t planning on letting Dallas get out of bounds to stop the clock.
But Dallas does run. With only three Niners left in the box, Prescott takes a wide-open lane and runs 17 yards, sliding to the ground with nine seconds left. The Cowboys’ offensive linemen hurriedly stumble to their positions and Prescott and his center set the ball on the ground, seemingly forgetting that the next play cannot start until an official touches the ball.
Four seconds left. George comes sprinting in from the backfield and he squeezes his way—just barely—through the A gap between the center and the right guard. George is blocked by the big linemen and he uses both hands to push the center out of his way so he can touch the football and place it on the ground for the official spot. He backpedals into the defense as the clock runs out.
Niners defenders stand up and point at Prescott, realizing they’ve just won the wild card game.
“Oh my gosh!” Tony Romo shouts on the CBS broadcast. Jim Nantz yells, “The official gets in the way and the game is over! The game is over!”
“The umpire has to touch the ball, of course that’s ridiculous for a game to end like that, Jim!” Romo says.
I couldn’t stop thinking about this play. I watched George elbow his way through the offensive line over and over again. He’s running so fast until he thuds against a wall of giant humans who will not let him through. This was a situation where an official impacted the game without even making a decision that anyone could argue with. Was the play-call to blame? Or the Cowboys players? And how much did George’s actions matter here? I couldn’t let it go, so the next week, I called an NFL game management coach to help me understand what went so wrong.
This coach was shocked by the play-call. He explained that their team wouldn’t have run that play without more time on the clock, because however long they think they have, everything goes faster and smoother in practice, where equipment staffers who know what the play is are standing in for the officials. I expected that. But what he said next surprised me.
“The crazy thing is that Ramon George is the fittest umpire in the NFL,” this coach said. “He’s in the best shape of any of them. So if he couldn’t keep up with this play, who could have?”
Wait a second, I interrupted. How do you know he’s the fittest?
“I know who trains each official,” the coach told me. “I know where they went to school, I know what kind of shape they are in. I know everything about them.”
This coach watches every play of every game to see how the officials move and react. He tracks how long crews take between plays to know how to time out end-of-game scenarios, and they give a scouting report to players on each official’s athletic capabilities. If the official is older, they’ll instruct players to hand them the ball to make it quicker and easier for them to spot the ball. And in the case of this Dallas play, the coach said they could tell that the Cowboys staff didn’t give George a heads-up on what they’d be doing on the play, or George would have been following more closely behind it.
I knew teams scouted their opponents with obsessive levels of detail, but I didn’t know they scouted the officiating crews just as closely.
“The Dallas play is exactly why teams scout officials,” this coach told me. “This is exactly why.”
