Goodell, and the referee, have had more than enough time to come up with a public statement.
Here’s the section of the rules the lawyer is basing his lawsuit on.
Reading the whole thing, it seems to apply to blatant cheating or crazy fan interference. It specifically exempts blown calls by the officials:
It’s interesting language in that it says “The authority and measures provided for in this entire Section 2 do not constitute a protest machinery for NFL clubs to avail themselves of in the event a dispute arises over the result of a game.” Also, “The Commissioner will not apply authority in cases of complaints by clubs concerning judgmental errors or routine errors of omission by game officials. Games involving such complaints will continue to stand as completed.”
So, clubs cannot invoke this rule to complain about a result or about officiating. That seems clear. However, it also says that “The investigation called for in this Section 2 will be conducted solely on the Commissioner’s initiative to review an act or occurrence that the Commissioner deems so extraordinary or unfair that the result of the game in question would be inequitable to one of the participating teams.”
So, my read on that is that, if you want to get super lawyer-y with the language, then under his own initiative and not as a result of team complaint, the Commissioner could open an investigation. There’s a tiny bit of wiggle room because of that “in cases of complaints by clubs” construction.
The chances of that actually happening are, of course, zero.
What gets me is that the ref was watching the interference/helmet hit as it was happening then made the “incomplete pass” signal. It wasn’t a missed call, he chose not to throw the flag. You can see that very clearly from replays. That was gross incompetence at best.
It reminds me of the famous 2010 “Imperfect Game” in which Armando Galarraga was robbed of a perfect game by an egregiously bad call on what should have been the final out. You watch the replay multiple times but can’t get past telling yourself “It’s simply not possible to get a straightforward call that badly wrong.”
That one was terrible, but I can sort of understand it. It a quick bang-bang call. This … this was a PI you saw coming a mile away. Plus the helmet-to-helmet. I just don’t understand missing this one at all.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and make a guess that this particular official will not be working the Super Bowl this year.
Saints got away with numerous facemask fouls. Also Brees threw that INT in overtime. And what about that 2009 Favre-bounty conference title game.
Here’s my question about the play and the non-call: Is there any way at all to explain it? I mean, even if you were generous, how could anyone interpret the play as being a non-foul? Like, the ball wasn’t catchable? The Saints player stepped out of bounds? The play was whistled dead at the line of scrimmage? What??
The LA cornerback that made the hit said that the ref told him the ball had been tipped, which would mean that there can’t be pass interference.
The difference is that the umpire in question (Jim Joyce) quickly came out, admitted his error, and apologized to Galarraga and the Tigers. And they accepted it pretty graciously. He was devastated and in tears over his mistake, and said it haunted him for years. The explosion of anger directed at him was therefore much less and shorter-lived than what we’re seeing now. He also was a veteran umpire with a strong reputation and so it was easier to see it as a single-point freak error rather than a pattern of incompetence. This was one nuclear-level mistake among a backdrop of smaller dumpster fires.
The NFL is going to be trying to put out fires on this for months. It’s going to overshadow everything. They’re probably hoping the story of Brady getting lasered in the face picks up steam so they can divert attention to something else.
New theory: Goodell was holding the laser.
Not related to the playoffs, but surprisingly, Larry Fitzgerald signed a new one year deal with the Cardinals. I’m surprised he didn’t retire, the Cards aren’t going anywhere next season.
That sounds like an excuse to me. Is it his job to determine that? It seems to me that he should throw the flag and let it be picked up if it is determined that the ball was tipped.
It’s far more likely to me that that official didn’t want to be known as the guy who “decided” a conference championship game with a pass interference penalty, so he reached for any excuse he could find to not throw that flag.
Absolutely correct. We’ve all seen plays where a flag is thrown for PI, but later picked up because it was determined that the ball had been tipped. Normally, it’s the line judges or the officials behind the play that make that determination, not the officials downfield.
Exactly. He should have thrown the flag out of an abundance of caution then conferred with his cohorts after the fact. You cannot pick up a flag that is not thrown.
Maybe, but why wait until then? There had been the usual number of calls previously in the game, and the result could have been quietly decided by one or two. Whistle-swallowing plagues hockey playoffs, but not so much football.
I think he just froze.
Is there any evidence the ball actually was tipped?
One proposal I’ve seen is no slow-motion for the replay official (I want to say I first saw if from Joe Posnanski). Look at all the angles you want/need to - but if a human can’t tell that the ball was touched in real-time, then we aren’t going to overturn it.
And I think that, for instance, real-time review of Edelman’s non-touch of that punt would have still (unfortunately) ended up overturning that fumble call. Romo and Nance’s commentary notwithstanding, there were angles that showed the ball clearly not touching either hand or his arms. It didn’t need frame-by-frame analysis.
Of course, then you’d need to write into the TV contracts that the networks can’t do slow-motion review of calls on the air either.
No. There are multiple replays available on the web, and none of them show any such evidence.
The NFL has itself stated that the officials blew the call. Had the ball been tipped, you can rest assured that we would have seen that evidence by now.