Serious question re: calls & the patriots

Not a lot of direct evidence, more just a fan's anecdotal experience

but does it seem the Pats are getting little to no leeway with the officiating?


the Lafell non-call last night was obvious DPI even at game speed; to me the Gronk OPI was silly....that was more a matter of big man/small man physics i thought (might be a little homerish, but you let the obvious DPI go).....to top it off it didn't look like the ball was in the air

gronk gets mauled virtually every pattern he runs; granted he's huge....and there's some of that "little guy trying to cover huge guy" bias...but....

i just seem to find myself every game wondering why we didn't get that call, or looking for a flag on virtually every big play.....because it seems they are there more often then not

much more so than previous years; obviously wanting every call & *****ing about the flags on the Pats is normal fan behavior.....but i consider myself pretty rational, relatively speaking, in this regard

just seem to be noticing it a lot more this year


not thinking major conspiracy theory, or league directive, just more along the lines of unitinentional bias.....we know black jerseied teams get more calls against them......could it be the officials subconsciously calling the Pats tighter because they "cheat"


or is it me as a fan subconsciously believing they are all out to get us lol


thoughts?

We seem to get getting many more unusual offensive penalties. Like that block called on Danny and the countless OPI calls that seem to go against us at least one per game. And this trend of making us score a TD twice is getting really old as well.

The number of obvious pick plays the Jets ran uncalled vs. the ones the pats have had called against them, granted by different crews, was another obvious example...

Penalties were 8 for Pats 7 for Fins.

There have been some strange offensive penalties called for sure but not to the point of being atrocious - that Carolina game comes to mind.

I hope the NFL maintains its enmity with the refs because once they have full time refs, it will be full on WWE time.

Gronks was a good call you just cant do what he did. LAFells was a bad call. Also thought he one the called on Amendola for a cut bock where he was laying on the ground was pretty suspect.

The Patriots are getting screwed on PI this season. Even Mike Reiss called out the refs in his up and down article and he's as fair they come.

"Down
Officiating crew with pass interference: On a night when it was a challenge to pick three players in this category, we’ll go outside the box and point out two apparent pass interference penalties that weren’t called – as defenders seemed to have interfered with tight end Rob Gronkowski and receiver Brandon LaFell." Chandler Jones up, Danny Amendola down in Patriots' win

Gronk is being treated like Shaq this season. Guys get away with mauling him because ge's so big and strong. Meanwhile if he gives even the smallest push off, that every receiver in the league gets away with, he draws a penalty.

The missed PI on LaFell was ridiculous. No idea how the refs missed that. The OPI on Gronk was away from the play and a 50/50 call at best.

Another thing that bugs me is how the refs blow the whistle every time the opposing defense jumps off sides. It amazes me whenever I watch GB games how the refs never blow the whistle when Rodgers draws the defense off sides and he is allowed a free play. It seems to happen every game. Yet, Brady never gets that benefit.

I don't have much confidence in the NFL and their "integrity" mantra at this point.

The incorrect decisions Reiss points out were by Rob Vernatchi, the guy who messed up the clock in San Diego. Both took at least 3 points away from drives.

So were they "errors" by an official who clearly lacks the skills to do his job or was it someone trying to get back into the good books of Goodell/Kensil/Blandino?

Mack Herron said:

Penalties were 8 for Pats 7 for Fins.

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Even though they were just about even in penalties called, its when they were called. Some end up taking away a TD, others are obvious PIs or OPIs on long passes, etc. It seem to me in the Dallas game every time the dallas's back was against the wall on third down the pats got some sort of call on them that sustained a dallas drive. Conversely there were a number of calls against the pats on third down that stalled a drive.In both casses they were either phantom or ticky tack calls.

I don't think BB is going to let the refs decide the games. He will score enough to offset any poor refereeing. The Pats had way more self inflicted personal foul and dumb penalties than bad calls against them.

I agree the refs are missing calls, but I don't believe the conspiracy theory. I also think that if the LaFell PI gets called then Harmon (I think it was Harmon) should have been called for PI when he defended that big play on the goal line, he arrived and made contact before the ball arrived and also never looked for the ball.

EDIT: Looking at it again it was Butler I was thinking of and it wasn't as clear as I thought it was yesterday. Don't think it was PI looking at it again, the timing was really good on the contact.

Mack Herron said:

Penalties were 8 for Pats 7 for Fins.

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True. But I counted at least 4 that were egregious enough that should have been called against the Fins and weren't.

- The PI on Taylor when he hit Lafell in the helmet
- The PI on Taylor when he grabbed Gronk's left arm
- An illegal block in the back that send Ebner flying out of the lane that Landry used for his big gain
- A tripping call on Brandon Albert when he leg-whipped Chandler Jones to take him down on the long pass completion to Cameron


The "Tripping" call on Amendola was also ridiculous. Hearing Simms claim that Amendola, who had been knocked to the ground, purposely got in the way of the Defender was ludicrous. The defender's path took him through where Amendola had been knocked down. Amendola did not do anything to try and impede that defender.

Bella*chick said:

We seem to get getting many more unusual offensive penalties. Like that block called on Danny and the countless OPI calls that seem to go against us at least one per game. And this trend of making us score a TD twice is getting really old as well.

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I agree with you. That call on Danny where the other player ran into Danny's head and fell over was stupid. I think the idea of a Pats Super Bowl is the NFL's worst nightmare.

I think the officiating has been bad in general. One thing that is a head scratcher is they cannot spot the ball for the life of them. There were two occasions last night where they took away a yard from the Pats because they couldn't spot the ball right.

I don't think it has been all against the Pats, but the refs suck about as bad as most of the teams in the NFL do this year.

I'm not necessarily thinking Goodell driven conspiracy; more "the Pats cheat, so we expect them to skirt the rules, so we call them tougher"

the fact that at least 2 obvious picks weren't called on the Jets irks me, as they made that a point of emphasis with the Pats after whining in the media

mosi said:

I agree with you. That call on Danny where the other player ran into Danny's head and fell over was stupid. I think the idea of a Pats Super Bowl is the NFL's worst nightmare.

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Judge Berman highlighted Brady's second half performance after the balls were inflated both in the hearing and his ruling. He obviously thought Brady's improved performance made the NFL's argument look silly. Just imagine how silly the NFL will look arguing their appeal if the Pats are undefeated and playing for another Super Bowl. It would be awesome. The NFL's worst nightmare is right.

It reminds me of Tim Donaghy, the NBA ref who was working with organized crime. He had a lot to say about how the NBA influences officiating. He said there was never a direct order from the league, but all the refs knew what the league wanted. They knew which teams and players the league was marketing. If they biased their officiating to help those teams and players, they would get better ratings and better jobs and make more by getting playoff games.

I've never felt this has been true of the NFL, but I'm beginnning to get ever so slightly suspicious that the same thing may be happening here even if it's to a small extent. Negate just a couple of big plays a game against the Pats and get better ratings from the league and better future assignments.

Bella*chick said:

We seem to get getting many more unusual offensive penalties. Like that block called on Danny and the countless OPI calls that seem to go against us at least one per game. And this trend of making us score a TD twice is getting really old as well.

Click to expand...

That call on Amendola was unusual, but mostly because you don't usually see a slot receiver trying to execute a crack back from the ground. It was a weird play, but it was the right call. Same with the clipping call a couple drives later. Legit foul, it makes sense why it's a foul, and it's on the Pats to clean that stuff up.

Last night there were definitely some strange non-calls, but to the refs' credit they were generally consistent in what they weren't calling. Gronk and LaFell both should've benefitted from DPI flags at different points and didn't get them, but the Pats' secondary also got away with a couple, albeit their fouls were less egregious.

There have been instances where I've really taken issue with the officiating this year--the Colts game being the big one--but last night wasn't one of them.

The only call I thought they really missed was the hold on Gronk early on the game. Cost the Pats a first down and maybe more. Otherwise, I thought it was fairly even handed and that the Pats actually got away with a couple of things in the secondary.

If you venture to the Fin's boards you will apparently find them fuming about the way the game was called as well.

It's human nature to focus on the borderline calls (or no-calls) that go against you and to ignore the ones that benefit you.

Refs are human too, and it's all too easy to criticize a call that you see with the benefit of a HD TV and a close-up shot in slow motion while forgetting the ref saw it from a quite different angle in real-time speed.

And apparently nobody really knows what a legal or illegal pick play looks like once you are away from the line of scrimmage. So not too surprising that there will be disagreement over individual plays. The Pats are going to play on the edge here, and because it is a common play for them with all their crossing routes, they are likely to get called more often than most other teams.