NFL Officials: Not Only Rigging Games, But Injuring Players: Fire the Whole Damn Lot!!!

I hope you enjoyed your NFL tripleheader Thursday.

I really do, because none of those games should've taken place.

That the NFL continues to even play at the concept (even on a pro-wrestling level) of legitimate competition after the debacle it threw us in Week 11 is beyond any sense of my personal comprehension.

If there even was the remaining illusion that the NFL even wanted to attempt to make the ignoramuses (ignorami?) of this country believe the games and the league (on balance) are on the up and up, they would've halted all play and fired every NFL referee after last week, especially Monday night.

Let's go back, first, and talk about NFL vice-president of officiating/league mafioso Dean Blandino. On Thursday of Week 10, before play began, Blandino was in the media attempting to cover for the league's asinine call allowing Odell Beckham Jr.'s touchdown catch to be disallowed, or a Golden Tate catch which was initially ruled a Bears interception, but, according to Pro Football Talk:

“Also, he wasn’t going to the ground until after he got two feet on the ground with possession of the ball. By then, the play was over because it was a catch and a touchdown. “

Now wait a cotton-picking second here: Isn't this the exact same as Odell Beckham Jr.? He got the ball, grasped it in his hands, got two feet down and turning, and wasn't going to ground. Touchdown, New York, right, Mr. Blandino???

The ONLY way you could actually say otherwise is to actually make a claim that no player has possession of the football until he brings the ball into his body – of course, that would disallow various other circus catches, including a couple famous Beckham catches and that famous David Tyree Super Bowl catch against his helmet!

Of course, the far more devastating comment that Blandino made in this press situation was this doozy:

“There’s always going to be that subjectivity to it,” Blandino said in his weekly officiating video. “The rule, the way it’s written, is clear, but we are going to have subjective judgments and debates on how long is long enough, was he going to the ground, was he a runner, and that’s just part of the deal.”

By this statement, Dean Blandino just admitted to anyone with an ounce of paying attention that the games are rigged.

The rule used to be simple, and “long enough” used to be very clearly defined: You either needed to get two feet down in bounds, get a body part down in bounds which would indicate you had been downed, or be pushed out of bounds when the referee would feel you would've otherwise fulfilled one of those conditions.

Because if you are going to get especially into the “was he a runner” bullshit, you get exactly to the comment that at least one person put into the comments on that article: That the catch rule, going back to Megatron, has been used to rig close games to ensure certain outcomes for various reasons. Period.

This year, it seems like the egregious number of erroneous referee calls and controversies thereto are designed to do several things, two of which are to pump the Patriots to 19-0 and to make as many other teams relevant for Week 17 as humanly possible.

Want proof? Let's go to Monday night.

Score is 10-10 in the third quarter, and Tom Brady throws a pass near the sideline to Danny Amendola, and the whistle sounds before he catches the ball.

Under the rules, the ball is dead, because of the inadvertent whistle. (Similar to other sports.)

The problem is that the referees ruled that Amendola had caught the ball, when you can hear that there was no way he did!
The ball was clearly in the air when the whistle went, but they gave Amendola the 14 yards – which would only have been correct had Amendola caught the ball and THEN the whistle goes. Rex Ryan being Rex Ryan and an idiot, he was walking in front of another official when the situation was going on and got 15 more on that (correctly).

In this case, at least, it didn't seem like it had anything to do with the outcome, simply because of the fact that the Patriots could not get any further on that drive and a long field-goal was missed.

And then we get to the last play of the game, Patriots up 20-13, Bills with the ball and probably need two plays to get a shot at a tying touchdown. Five seconds left.

Pass to Sammy Watkins at the Buffalo 47, would've been at least close enough to fire a Hail Mary, so, with two Patriots charging in on him, he rolls off the field, untouched.

The head linesman rules a “surrender” move, winds the clock, game over.

Well, that only establishes that one of two things took place: Either the referees rigged the game for the Patriots (by ensuring their victory with an erroneous call – which is what most referee experts said afterward, at least that the call was an error), or Watkins rigged the game by ensuring the result (not unakin to that otherwise-inexplicable playoff play on the last play of Seattle-New Orleans).

And then here's the kicker: The official admitted he erred because he actually applied the COLLEGE RULE (where if you go down, you're down and don't need to be touched). Are you motherfucking kidding me???

If this were simply about on the field stuff, this would be nothing new for anybody. I mean, have we had ONE WEEK this season which has gone without at least one game-changing admitted error by the NFL with respect to it's referees???

But let's take this NFL refereeing situation even one step further and state openly that the supposed “incompetence” of these referees is openly endangering the players.

Week 10: Rams-Ravens Case Keenum goes back to pass, and gets sacked. The sack was OK, but the problem was his head smacked off the turf and led to an apparent concussion which may have aided in a game-changing fumble a couple of plays later.

So where does this come into the officiating? A 2015 new rule, according to CNN, an “independent certified athletic trainer” (you may insert your laugh track here) from the league is supposed to spot players who were concussed and they have the power to stop the game and force people to look at the player.

And then people railed on the Rams (and looked at the possibility of sanctions) about it – WHEN THE LEAGUE SHOULD'VE DONE IT IN THE FIRST DAMN PLACE.

It's enough to talk about “being a man” and “rubbing some dirt on it”, but this is not the team this time – it's the league itself, who we know doesn't give a damn about the players, but this is now outright endangerment.

I mean, it's bad enough that “incompetence” affects on the field results, we've now got “incompetence” (and your mileage may wildly vary on that!) which is also affecting the ability of the players to play even as safely as the animals on the sidelines will allow them to.

The league obviously uses officiating errors to justify to the populace that the games are legitimate, when they clearly use these errors to shape the games (scoring, margin, spread, result...), but these errors are also being used to injure these players.

So they really needed just to fire the entire fucking lot, postpone the games, and get some real referees.

But they won't! Why?? Because they need results to go certain ways and a nice narrative to keep the NFL in the news 169 hours a week. And doing so is verifiably physically hurting these players!!

Don't believe me? Ask Mike McCarthy, who wants words with the league over an offensive pass interference call from Thursday night's loss to the Bears – on Brett Favre Night!

(Said because usually, when something like that happens, the home team usually gets the gift win... Pro Football Talk seems to indicate it was a good call on a “pick play”, but how many times do players get away with that these days?)