Time for action
Hey Roger Goodell, do SOMETHING about this Saints mess
Whenever a baseball team loses a game it should have won early in the season you always hear someone say "A game in May is just as important as a game in September." This axiom is blatantly false. You have plenty of time to make up for a loss in May. In September when there aren't nearly as many games left on the schedule, it's much more difficult to overcome that loss.
If Cody Parkey had missed a field goal in the first quarter of the Bears playoff game against the Eagles no one would have remembered it. Since he missed the game winner as time expired he will live in eternal infamy in Chicago.
Same goes for that no-call in the Rams-Saints game. With just a minute left in the game, the Saints would have gotten four more downs. The Rams had timeouts but the odds of overcoming that deficit with seconds left would have been overwhelming. It was a much bigger call than any earlier in the game.
Afterwards I heard a bunch of people saying "Well if they're going to go back to that blown call why don't they go back to the face mask penalty that wasn't called on the Saints, or the delay of game in the second quarter? Those were blown calls too that affected the outcome."
They did affect the score but not the outcome. With just a minute left, that one call had a direct effect on the final score. There was time to overcome every other call or no-call in that game.
Now the question is what will the NFL do about it? Saints fans want justice. A New Orleans lawyer has filed a lawsuit ordering Commissioner Roger Goodell to put both teams back on the field and replay the final minute of the game. It won't happen but it's the kind of pressure that might make the league actually do something other than give us lip service about the state of its officiating.
It's at an all-time low. The best refs are the ones who go unseen. NFL refs are in the crosshairs of fans week in and week out.
You would think replay would have helped the situation but it's only made it worse. The simplest calls are paralyzing because they know they have the crutch of going back and sorting it out with replay. It's maddening. And don't get me started with how long and agonizing the process is. After two replays an entire television audience knows how they are going to rule on it, yet it takes forever to get the game restarted. It's not that hard guys. Figure out a better way.
And if we need penalties replayed then so be it. I hear so many people against it but I heard the same thing about replay in the first place. If your only problem with it is that it's never been done before then that's a pretty weak argument. That's how progress has always been thwarted.
Like I said, the most important plays, hits, baskets, scores and referee calls are the ones late in the game. So make those the priority. If we need a replay on a referee's call or no-call in the last two minutes of a game then let's get one. Don't let one bad call decide that a team is or isn't going to the Super Bowl when we have the ability to get it right. It will lend more credibility to your sport. There are conspiracy theorists out there that believe that the league wanted Los Angeles and not New Orleans in that game. All they did was give them ammunition.
Start with pass interference and if they see the need to add other penalties then they can but not doing anything, Roger Goodell, would be another horrific no-call.
