Shortly after commissioner Paul Tagliabue met with NFL executives at last month's scouting combine, an AFC general manager filed an unofficial complaint with anyone who would listen. It had nothing to do with what Tagliabue said. In fact it had nothing to do with what anyone said.
|
|
| Hey Mike Holmgren, the NFL says its officials are just fine. (Getty Images) |
"I can't believe," he said, shaking his head, "that we all sat in there without mentioning one thing about the officiating."
Uh-oh, here we go again.
Just when you thought you were safe from the words "inadvertent whistle," people are complaining about officials again. Or, they're still complaining. Same difference. At any rate, the perception out there is that NFL officiating reached an all-time low in 2005, and the perception, quite frankly, is wrong.
Don't take it from me. Take it from Rich McKay, president and general manager of the Atlanta Falcons and co-chairman of the NFL competition committee that next week will notify owners at the annual league meeting that officiating is better than the public is led to believe.
"There were 39,000 plays this year," said McKay, "and we thought officials had a very good year. There is no question there were a couple of calls in the Super Bowl and/or the playoffs that we wish we had back. But, by and large, it was a very good year."
Try selling that to the people in Seattle. Or Seahawks' coach Mike Holmgren. He's the guy who stood in front of Seahawks' fans a day after his team lost to Pittsburgh in Super Bowl XL and announced that he "knew it was going to be tough going up against the Pittsburgh Steelers, (but) I didn't know that we were going to have to play the guys in the striped shirts, as well."
He's also the guy who resigned from the competition committee, provoking speculation that it was in protest to calls he believed might have cost him a game. Maybe it was. Only Holmgren knows. But, even if it was, don't expect a knee-jerk reaction.
McKay readily acknowledged there were blown calls last year -- with a penalty against Seattle's Matt Hasselbeck for a low block in Super Bowl XL a mistake -- but there weren't enough to cause a ripple within the competition committee.
Nevertheless, outside of that seven-man group, there was a response the size of a category-four hurricane, and I'm not talking about Seattle; I'm talking about New York. Look at the stack of mail on the desk of Mike Pereira, the league's director of officiating. It's several inches thick, and it's been that way since Super Bowl XL.
"I've gotten more mail about this Super Bowl than I had for 'The Tuck,'" said Pereira, referring to the 2001 playoff game where an apparent Tom Brady fumble was ruled an incomplete pass. "There's been an outpouring of emotion from Seattle and from the rest of the country about the Super Bowl, but you know something? If I didn't have any reaction to the game or to what was alluded to in the Super Bowl, I'd worry. It speaks to the passion about the game, and I think that's great."
It's that passion that has fans calling for a better officiating -- only they're not sure how to get it. There have been calls for full-time officials, with one AFC head coach telling me he's grown so frustrated with borderline penalties that he'd support full-time refs now. OK, fine, but he's a party of one.
