BostonBullit

When I first saw that a rookie ref crew was working the Pats Colts game I was, like most people, confused. How the hell could the NFL send a green team to ref the most hyped regular season game in history? It just didn't make sense. As I surfed around the web absorbing all the pre-game hype I noticed a few threads on a Colts forum about Randy Moss and "pushing off", which I have seen him do every now and then but I think most of the time the announcer says something about it it's BS because he never extends his arm to actually push anyone. Before anyone gets on my case remember that I HAVE seen him ACTUALLY push off a couple of times. Back to the point. Watching the pre-game stuff Sunday morning one of the talking heads brought up the issue specifically and then he pointed out a very curious coincidence - that the rookie crew has a record this season of calling offensive PI at a much higher rate than the other crews. Very interesting, NE's main weapon is preceived to be Randy Moss on the deep ball and it's been shown that there are few ways to defend it. He beats doubles and triples, gets most jump balls, etc. so one of the only effective ways to defend against him is to use a very liberal interpretation of the OPI rules and "ask" the refs to keep an eye out for the penalty. and who gets assigned to the game? a ref team with a track record of doing just that.

all very odd....

psychoPat

Brady'sButtBoy

either it was intentional as you say to thwart Moss and Hobbs, or it was just one of the poorest decisions made the NFL this year. You have the biggest regular season game in years and years and you put anything less than your best refs in the game? Doesn't make much sense.

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MoLewisrocks

Yeah, but what was odder still was they also had the fewest defensive PI calls of any crew in the league as well. My first thought was Polian hand picked that wet dream crew seeing as we now had a huge WR who tends to push off and he now has found himself with a couple of bigger physical corners while we no longer feature those in part because of his rules emphasis...

Then the piece de resistance was when they called defensive PI only on us and at a rate nearly equal to their total in their previous 8 games...

I really hope Eisen has Perriera on tonight. Not that he will be able to explain this all away, but I enjoy gauging his angst in attempting to as indicative of how flustered the league is by the backlash on these performances.

Sooner or later they simply have to make PI reviewable.

Patsfanin Philly

http://www.badzebras.com/zebradetail...3&zebracrew=34



Interestingly, they were rated to have have 6 very good games and two very bad ones. Unfortunately, we know which was one of the bad ones.....

workhorse

There was an article on the Star's board (it's gone since the board crashed), but it was about this issue before the game was played. I think it was by a national guy, but I can't remember who. In it a league guy was saying that all the officiating crews are assigned by a computer before the season. They have a couple things that can not happen. The same crew can not ref a game with a single duplicate team within 6 games and can not ref a game with duplicate opponents in the same year. Other than that it didn't say much other than the "we feel that all our crews are qualified to ref any game" type comments. Just FYI.

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CTPatsFan

You (via the national guy) pretty much answered my question before I asked it. Thanks, horse. I'd have to think all of this stuff is randomly generated somewhere, with the aforementioned caveats.

I think it was more pure Indy luck to get this crew as opposed to something insidious by the NFL.

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18 year STH, although games are fewer and farther between.
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Metaphors

I don't think there was anything underhanded about the crew, but it was an amazingly bad decision. Could you imagine Polian's reaction if questionable calls went against the Colts? That is not a good way to advance your career in the NFL. So they were under a lot of pressure.

If the Pats were even in the area of a receiver during a long pass (read, "high profile"), it was going to get called. I think the Samuel play was interference since if the roles were reversed I would have expected it...the Hobbs call was comical. Moss has been known to push off in the red zone (not as much as his reputation would indicate) so you know that a flag was coming at the first opportunity. That call was not only amazingly bad, it should have been illegal contact on the defender.

The funny thing is the the Colts DBs were physical with the Pats receivers all game. Outside of the Faulk mugging, I didn't mind it at all. Harkens me back to the days before the "point of emphasis".

So the crew called the game the way they felt (consciously or subconsciously) they needed to in order to keep their careers on a positive path. Unfortunately for them, the firestorm this has generated will likely force them to work games in Arizona and Oakland for a while. I really don't blame them, at least not completely. They should have never been put in that situation.

Joker

Just stop the nonsense....somehwere along the line, Polian set this up. This crazed maniac is behind EVERYTHING that's gone down this year...''the "un-named" Midwestern GM" source every dyam media clown is using for info

cartmen

WHO GIVES A FLYING CRAP???? we won lets move on please, god!!!