Tag: referees

Darren Rizzi agitated with how officials managed end of third quarter

Darren Rizzi had a lot to say after the Washington Commanders were allowed to attempt a kick after the clock hit zero:

The New Orleans Saints-Washington Commanders game had a few calls made by officials that ultimately impacted the final score, and one such play was at the end of the third quarter. The Commanders were allowed to kick a field goal as the time on the clock was run out to zero seconds, this kick was missed, and then the officials called the quarter off and the play dead, allowing for a retry at the start of the fourth quarter.

Interim head coach Darren Rizzi had a lot to say about this decision and what he was told by the officials.

“Yeah it got totally mismanaged, so, y’know (Washington) had the diving catch, I didn’t agree with it at all, the way it was done,” Rizzi began. “So we had the diving catch, I wasn’t sure, I had the challenge flag in my hand, and I was talking to the sideline official and I’m looking at the clock and we’re discussing on the headset about, y’know, ‘Hey the quarter’s gonna end here, they’re gonna take the quarter.'”

Rizzi continued: “And I got the challenge flag in my hand trying to figure out and communicate with up top whether or not we’re gonna challenge the catch or not. And I’m talking to the official and I’m saying to him, ‘Hey I might challenge this, I might challenge this, hey the quarter’s over, the quarter’s over, the quarter’s over, the quarter’s over, the quarter’s over,’ for about four or five seconds. They let they play go, he misses the field goal.”

What happened next shocked him. Rizzi could only protest the do-over and watch as referee Shawn Hochuli’s crew let the Commanders try another kick after missing the first try.

“So whoever’s in charge of shutting the play down, they obviously let the play go on. And so the explanation I got is it’s a replay-assist situation, the play shouldn’t have been run because the clocks were at zero, the clocks were at zero, their clocks were definitely at zero, the quarter was over. But the officials missed that, and that’s why the play was allowed to go on. That’s where my gripe is: The play should not have been allowed to go on, they gave the field goal kicker basically a freebie, they gave him the mis-hit, and so …” Rizzi trailed off.

It was something he’d never seen before in decades of coaching. And that led Rizzi to level some strong criticism at the officiating crew for how they handled the situation.

“I’ve been coaching kickers for 30 years. You give a guy a warmup shot, he’s got a pretty good shot of making the second one. The success rate goes through the roof when the guy gets a second chance, so that’s where my gripe was, is that it was a management,” Rizzi said, pausing for breath, “Game management from the officials, operations, I’ll let the league handle it, but I hope that everybody else gets held accountable in this league. I hope that the people that mismanaged that get held accountable too because it was completely mishandled.”

Ultimately the Saints would go on to lose 20-19, and this was a critical point in the game as neither team particularly scored well at one point or another, so any points were hard to come by for both sides. Rizzi clearly was upset with the decision, and we will see what happens when the review comes in regarding what calls could have been made or not made.

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NFL’s flag-happiest referee assigned to Saints-Giants game

The New Orleans Saints and New York Giants are going to have to deal with the NFL’s flag-happiest referee in Sunday’s Week 14 matchup:

The New Orleans Saints and New York Giants might be seeing a lot of yellow on Sunday as their matchup got assigned the most flag-happy referee in the NFL.

Clete Blakeman was assigned the Week 14 matchup of Saints-Giants per Football Zebras. Blakeman’s crews lead the league in both penalties per game (15.3) and penalty yards per game (128.5).

Neither team will be excited to see him on the sidelines, but New York especially. In the games of theirs that they have played in with him as the referee, they are just 3-6. New Orleans doesn’t have a spectacular record, but at least it is a balanced 7-7.

Blakeman was the referee for the Saints’ 51-27 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers earlier this season. New Orleans was penalized seven times for 70 yards. The Buccaneers, however, were hit 12 times for 86 yards. At worst, he and his crew don’t seem to have a negative lean towards the Saints. Let’s hope for a clean game on Sunday.

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Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes fined for unsportsmanlike conduct vs. Bills

Kansas City #Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes fined for unsportsmanlike conduct vs. the Buffalo #Bills | @EdEastonJr

The Kansas City Chiefs are moving on from their first regular-season loss in Week 11 against the Buffalo Bills. The disappointing defeat has added another layer of frustration, as the NFL has reportedly fined quarterback Patrick Mahomes.

According to a report from NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero, Mahomes was fined $14,069 for unsportsmanlike conduct “violent gesture” as he celebrated a touchdown pass in last week’s loss in Buffalo. Mahomes is caught on camera making a pointing gesture after tossing a touchdown pass to Noah Gray in the fourth quarter.

The fine can be debatable among football fans as it initially appears nonvolatile, but the league saw it differently. Ironically, Mahomes was fined $50,000 against the Bills last season for “verbally abusing” game officials in his postgame press conference rant.

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Nebraska quarterback Dylan Raiola replicated Mahomes’ gesture on Saturday during his game against the Wisconsin Badgers. Raiola is a well-noted fan of Mahomes and has often been inspired by his play. He could have seen all the commotion from the Chiefs quarterback being admonished for doing the same celebration.

Sam Darnold’s facemask non-call was so brutal even the Rams couldn’t believe it

How did the refs miss this?

The Minnesota Vikings lost a chance at a comeback drive against the hosting Los Angeles Rams on Thursday night because of an egregious missed facemask call.

Right at the end of the fourth quarter with Minnesota down eight, the Vikings got the ball back to try and tie the game up in regulation.

However, Darnold got sacked in the Los Angeles end zone by Rams outside linebacker Byron Young to scrap Minnesota’s chances at tying things up.

On Young’s sack, you can clearly see him grab Darnold’s facemask to swing him to the ground. Even Young reacted after the play like he knew he made a terrible mistake to give Minnesota a big gain in penalty yards.

However, the refs didn’t call it, and that was that.

How the officials missed this is beyond us. That was a clear and blatant facemask to the point that Young even reacted to it after it happened.

The Vikings have a right to be furious about this, even if there was no guarantee they’d tie the game up. The missed call denied them the full extent of their chance.

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Al Michaels complaining about the refs throwing out so many flags during Cowboys-Giants was priceless

Al Michaels was over it.

There are few people as funny in NFL broadcasting as a cranky Al Michaels, and the referees got him going during Thursday night’s Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants game.

Not only did the refs seemingly call a penalty on the wrong team in the first quarter, they called so many fouls during the Thursday Night Football matchup that Michaels started sassing the officials from the booth.

Seriously, he went in on the refs more than once, even comparing the game to Flag Day. Yikes!

Nobody likes when the flags start flying at will during an NFL game, but at least we got some priceless commentary from Michaels about it.

https://twitter.com/awfulannouncing/status/1839482507500118469

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An NFL officiating crew seemingly called a face mask penalty on the wrong player during Cowboys-Giants

Oooooof.

NFL referees don’t always get it right, but this face mask penalty called during Thursday night’s Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants game was beyond the pale.

Giants tight end Daniel Bellinger got called for an offensive face mask penalty on Cowboys linebacker DeMarvion Overshown early in the first quarter, which pushed New York back on Dallas’ side of the field.

What’s even less helpful is the fact that it sure looked like Overshown was the one who got his hands on Bellinger’s face mask during the play in question.

You don’t really see Bellinger get his hands near Overshown’s face mask at any point during the sequence, which means the Giants tight end both got his face mask held and a flag for it, too.

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This really seems like an egregious miss by this game’s officiating crew.

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L2M reports: Which NBA referees make the fewest mistakes?

No one is perfect, not even the best at their craft. That’s the case with NBA officials, who have to make decisions in tenths of a second while overseeing some of the fastest and most physical basketball players in the world. To determine who the …

No one is perfect, not even the best at their craft. That’s the case with NBA officials, who have to make decisions in tenths of a second while overseeing some of the fastest and most physical basketball players in the world. To determine who the best are at making those tough decisions, we’re digging deep into the league’s Last Two Minute (L2M) reports.

The NBA doesn’t publish full game reports, but the L2M has become a useful tool to identify which referees have been most accurate under pressure. Although the available data doesn’t assign individual judgments to specific referees, but rather to the entire crew, we can still analyze the accuracy of officials with at least 1,000 appearances in L2M decisions since 2015-16.

(Data crunching courtesy of Ali Mohammad Tayeb and Alberto de Roa).

The NFL will test ‘Hawk-Eye’ technology in preseason to (hopefully!) replace first-down chain measurements

This is SUCH a smart idea by the NFL.

Football fans deserve a better way to measure a close call on a first-down and thankfully, the NFL is finally listening to such concerns.

According to AP reporting, the league will test Sony’s Hawk-Eye technology during the upcoming preseason. This would replace the “chain crew” used to measure whether or not an offense has successfully converted a first-down.

The current methodology, which feels archaic to many, could see a major improvement if it is replaced. Here are more thoughts from NFL executive Gary Brantley:

“We’re in the installation phase for all of our stadiums, really getting them calibrated and up to date,” said Brantley, the NFL’s senior vice president and chief information officer. “We’re just really getting to a place where this system is as accurate as possible and really calibrating across our multiple stadiums. … We have multiple stadiums with multiple dimensions inside of those stadiums with different age. So, we’re really just going through the installation of putting in the infrastructure and making sure these cameras are installed.”

Sony, creators of the Hawk-Eye tracking innovation, recently became the technology and headphone partner of the NFL.

While the technology may not be ready for full implementation by next season, the tracking service would add cameras to the players, officials, and the football itself.

It would immediately notify referees if a first down was converted or not.

For fans of the “chain crew” on the gridiron, they would still reportedly remain on the sideline as a backup plan. But this could be a massive step forward for the NFL. They would join the United Football League, which currently implements similar “TrU Line” technology.

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Rasheed Wallace weighs in on the Chiefs’ criticism of officials, predicts 2024 record

Rasheed Wallace weighs in on the #Chiefs’ criticisms of NFL officials and gives his prediction for next season in this interview with Ed Easton Jr. | @EdEastonJr

The Kansas City Chiefs had several games with mini blowups about the officiating during the 2023 season. The most notable in the regular season was at home against the Buffalo Bills, in which offensive offside was called on Kadarius Toney, leading to postgame criticism from Patrick Mahomes and head coach Andy Reid.

One Chiefs fan who knows about criticizing officials is former NBA star Rasheed Wallace. Chiefs Wire Ed Easton Jr. spoke to Wallace about the Chiefs’ fines for calling out the officiating and his predictions for the 2024 season.

“You always have to do that because you just have to call out what’s not right,” Wallace said. “If you see something that’s not right, then, hey, call it out. The league doesn’t like you to do that. But as players, we have to do that because we’re under such scrutiny from the media and fans.

“It’s like, look, all right, we all know we can see this, what’s happening and so forth. Why do we say the majority is mostly still on a player, because we go out there and execute things, right? It’s so much video out here now. Especially in football, it’s hard to do some real cheat stuff. Like in basketball, you can because there are so many possessions.”

The Chiefs handled the fines throughout the season, similar to Wallace, who never held back his opinions during his 16-year NBA career. A longtime fan of the team, he gave his assessment of the roster heading into the new season.

“We have the best quarterback in the game, the Kansas City Cannon, and the best tight end in the game right now,” Wallace said. “I think we got the best ends in the game. We got the best D-lineman with CJ (Chris Jones), and we must keep putting it all together. Everybody wants to come to the Chiefs now. It’s sort of that same mantra when Brady was in New England — everybody wanted to play in New England because they knew that they were the best chance for me to get a Super Bowl to play with the best quarterback.”

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Training camp is only weeks away, and Wallace has early predictions for the Chiefs and their new schedule.

“I know we’re not going to go undefeated; just throw those talks out the window because the guys are too good in the NFL,” Wallace continued. “If a team goes undefeated, then it’s like, man, you have to have an offer for every position defense to go undefeated now, but I can see it going 12-4 (13-4) going into the playoffs. We definitely got to have home-field. Last year, we didn’t even have a No. 1 receiver, and we still got the job done. Now, imagine that some of the receivers we picked up and drafted are ready to come to play.”

‘The Sheed and Tyler Show, ‘ an Underdog Fantasy production, airs new episodes on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

It’s official! Nevada referees to get a pay raise

Nevada game officials are set for a pay increase.

Good news for game officials in Nevada on Monday as they have a new contract – and a pay raise – starting with high school games this fall.

The Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association (NIAA) has agreed to a new deal for game officials for this fall, with all officiants set to receive a pay raise. Reporting from the Reno Gazette Journal says that football officials will see the biggest pay raise, although all referees will see some level of an increase.

According to the Reno Gazette Journal, officials will now be paid “$85 for varsity and $65 for JV games. Football officials will receive $95/75.” This pay increase “brings officials pay in line with the average of what most states pay around the country.

The agreement is pending the NIAA’s approval at their June board meeting.

Compensation for those involved in high school sports has been a hot-button issue in recent months. In Florida for instance, Governor Ron DeSantis got behind legislation to raise the salaries for high school coaches.