It’s no secret how much disdain the general public has for referees in all sports. Particularly in football.
Fans think (with a lot of evidence to show) that they make a lot of mistakes during games and they should be better.
However, commissioner Roger Goodell thinks they’ve never been better.
During his Super Bowl media week press conference, Goodell was asked about the officiating and says
“I don’t think it’s ever been better in the league,” Goodell said at his annual Super Bowl week news conference. “There are over 42,000 plays in a season. Multiple infractions could occur on any play. Take that out or extrapolate that. That’s hundreds if not millions of potential fouls. And our officials do an extraordinary job of getting those. Are there mistakes in the context of that? Yes, they are not perfect and officiating never will be.”
Obviously not many liked it because our eyes tell us differently. There have just been too many mistakes made during games that we’ve witnessed to think otherwise.
“In the championship game, that was stopped appropriately because the clock was running by an official on the field,” Goodell said Wednesday. “That happens frequently in our game. That’s not an unusual thing to have that happen. … We may not agree with every TV announcer or officiating expert, but we think our officials are doing a great job. We’re always going to look to our competition committee and everything else we have, how we improve our officiating, but it will never be perfect.”
Later in the AFC Championship Game, there was another controversial call when Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow was whistled for intentional grounding on Cincinnati’s final possession, a costly penalty that backed the Bengals up to their own 10-yard line with 1:27 remaining. Former vice president of officiating for the NFL and current Fox Sports rules analyst Dean Blandino said afterward it was an incorrect call because Chiefs defensive lineman Chris Jones hit Burrow as he threw the ball.
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