Bell: Upon further review, NFL needs full-time officials
IRVING, Texas — It would have been totally appropriate to equip NFL owners with red challenge flags as they conducted a one-day league meeting Wednesday.
With so many high-profile officiating mishaps this season, it is clearly time for further review.
“There have been some glaring mistakes this season that you haven’t seen in the past,” Green Bay Packers president Mark Murphy acknowledged to Paste BN Sports during a break in the meetings.
Why’s that?
“Game’s faster,” said Murphy, a former NFL safety. “It’s not an excuse, but the technology is so much different, you’re seeing things that you didn’t see in the past. Mistakes. You’ve got slow-motion, HD cameras. I probably had some interceptions in my career that would be overturned now.”
Although league officials maintain that the efficiency of officials this season is consistent with previous years, roughly a 95% accuracy rate, it sure doesn’t feel that way. Not when the Baltimore Ravens lose a game on a field goal when officials blew a call by not flagging Jacksonville Jaguars tackle Luke Joeckel for an illegal formation. Not when the Detroit Lions lose after officials failed to flag Seattle Seahawks linebacker K.J. Wright for illegally batting a fumbled football out of the end zone. Not when referee Pete Morelli’s crew has been yanked from an assignment this Sunday night, undoubtedly in an effort to reduce exposure for another prime-time gaffe.
Pick your poison: Timing errors, inadvertent whistles, questionable catches – or not.
Sure, nobody’s perfect. In a sport that is increasingly faster, the officials will miss calls. Sometimes, they won’t be positioned for the best angle.
Yet too often this season, the gaffes have had to do with the administration of the rules. Who better to trust than the referees to provide the basis for any given call?
Owners received a report from the competition committee regarding the officiating, and Commissioner Roger Goodell pledged action. “No stone will be left unturned,” he promised.
That’s the spirit needed about now. Of the roughly 125 officials overseen by director of officiating Dean Blandino, 10 are in their first year in the league, and 23 have less than two years of NFL experience. It’s fair to wonder how much the turnover factors into the inconsistency.
Goodell said the NFL will take a hard look at everything from training of officials to streamlining the rule book. And he’s already formed a committee of former players, coaches and general managers to come up with a proposal that defines a catch. Imagine that.
More than ever, though, the NFL needs full-time referees. It’s time.
Unlike their peers in other pro sports, NFL officials typically work a full-time job during the week — as bankers, accountants or principals, for example — then jet off to cover a weekend game. Between games, the officials conduct reviews and training.
That needs to change, at least for the crew chiefs.
“They need to exhaust every possibility to make things better,” Mike Pereira, a former NFL officiating director who now serves as the rules analyst for Fox, told Paste BN Sports.
The league has certainly warmed to the idea of full-time officials. Goodell indicated that there are issues that need to be resolved with the referees’ union for such a plan to come to fruition. Jim Quirk, executive director of the NFL Referees Association, told Paste BN Sports that philosophically, the officials are not opposed to the notion.
“The problem we have is that everyone would be an at-will employee, and they can fire them if they don’t like the way they comb their hair,” Quirk said.
Pereira said that a decade ago, he was strongly against full-time officials. But he changed that opinion before leaving the NFL in 2009 and believes that with the overwhelming exposure of the league — which includes controversy over calls going viral on social media — the pressure will be immense on Goodell, Blandino and Co. to make changes.
Rather than hiring all officials on a full-time basis, Pereira thinks the 17 referees should work solely for the league on a year-round basis, with the attached task of training the rest of their crews. In addition to additional on-field work during the offseason, Pereira believes the league would be best-served by having the referees work out of a centralized location for training purposes.
“The officials need to be more a part of the overall process,” Pereira said.
Several years ago, Pereira presented a proposal for full-time officials to Ray Anderson, who preceded Troy Vincent as the NFL’s executive vice president for football operations. Pereira sayds he was laughed out of the room, with money and the risk of losing officials, among the snags.
“If you’re truly committed to it,” Pereira said, “you find a way to get it done.”
There should be no lack of commitment now, as too many laughs are directed at the men in stripes.
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Follow NFL columnist Jarrett Bell on Twitter @JarrettBell