The officiating

TheFlyingWedge said:

On top of the horrible officiating, it's inbearable listening to Phil Simms say over and over, "the refs got the right call", "good call by the ref", "the refs called the right one on that play", blah blah blah.

To be fair, he did question one PI call today - theres a first time for everything.

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I turned off those two with one minute to go in the 1st half & watched in silence. Much better for my nerves. If I heard one more reference to the two -/::&$?&! Super bowl losses I was going to put my foot through my big screen tv!

Bobsyouruncle said:

The Andrews holding call taking away the TD was about as obvious as it gets. Definite holding.

Butler PI was phantom. Melvin PI was a good call. Didn't get a good look on Chung PI.

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The Chung PI looked like there may have been no contact at all. Need to watch that one again.

PatsDeb said:

I turned off those two with one minute to go in the 1st half & watched in silence. Much better for my nerves. If I heard one more reference to the two -/::&$?&! Super bowl losses I was going to put my foot through my big screen tv!

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^^
This. Throughout the game, the constant reference to those two Superbowls was tiresome. I turned off the volume too-Have never done that so much as I've done this year.

PatsDeb said:

I turned off those two with one minute to go in the 1st half & watched in silence. Much better for my nerves. If I heard one more reference to the two -/::&$?&! Super bowl losses I was going to put my foot through my big screen tv!

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I used a new tactic watching games this week. I turned down the volume to such a low level that I couldn't actually hear what the announcers were saying. It worked especially well for the Arizona @ Seattle game and saved me from the usual Michaels/Collingsworth bullcrap. If you get it just right you'll still be able to hear the crowd and some of the calls.

Edit: I'm not sure how many people remember it, but they did broadcast a game without announcers quite a few years ago. I enjoyed it but I think they realized that they would be putting people out of jobs and scratched the idea.

Deflatemyballs said:

The treatment Gronk gets from the refs is almost as frustrating as what our secondary went through today.

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Yeah this team in general seems to get called for way more OPI than any team in the league. And on the other end Gronk gets the LeBron/Shaq effect where he can absorb a lot of contact but it doesn't look like much because he's so big.

1960Pats said:

I used a new tactic watching games this week. I turned down the volume to such a low level that I couldn't actually hear what the announcers were saying. It worked especially well for the Arizona @ Seattle game and saved me from the usual Michaels/Collingsworth bullcrap. If you get it just right you'll still be able to hear the crowd and some of the calls.

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Seahawks fans know how we feel now, when NBC constantly references Super Bowl losses hahaha.

Froob said:

Yeah this team in general seems to get called for way more OPI than any team in the league. And on the other end Gronk gets the LeBron/Shaq effect where he can absorb a lot of contact but it doesn't look like much because he's so big.

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Yup, and when he barely pushes a guy which every receiver in the league gets away with, the defender goes flying and Gronk gets called for a penalty.

fnordcircle said:

Beckham should have had a TD so it all evened out in the end.

Right call but bad rule.

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Sorry I disagree here.

If this is a catch then all instances were someone makes a catch falling, has the ball while a knee touches the ground and then loses control when the rest of his body hits the ground also need to count. And that doesn't make sense because you need to hold on to the ball (i.e. complete the process of a catch).

The way I see it is that you need to hold on to the ball until you move due to your own momentum and not due to the balls original momentum anymore. If ODB catches the ball, stops and the ball gets punched out while the original impetus is gone it is a clear TD. But that didn't happen here.


In general the issues that we see with officiating are mostly not due to bad referees but because of the cluster**** that is the NFL rulebook. On paper a lot of those rules might make sense but they are just insanely difficult to enforce or require too much subjectivity which leads to inconsistent calls. The league should really take a year and work through the entire rulebook and try to simplify things for the zebras. I rather have strict but consistently enforced rules than the randomness that we have right now. But instead we just add more and more specific exceptions into the book.

Mark. said:

^^
This. Throughout the game, the constant reference to those two Superbowls was tiresome. I turned off the volume too-Have never done that so much as I've done this year.

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Yea. The only problem with shutting the sound completely off is that you do miss maybe 2-3 interesting nuggets of news or information that have some remote value to the viewer.

Everything else is diarrhea of mouth and useless drivel.

1960Pats said:

I used a new tactic watching games this week. I turned down the volume to such a low level that I couldn't actually hear what the announcers were saying. It worked especially well for the Arizona @ Seattle game and saved me from the usual Michaels/Collingsworth bullcrap. If you get it just right you'll still be able to hear the crowd and some of the calls.

Edit: I'm not sure how many people remember it, but they did broadcast a game without announcers quite a few years ago. I enjoyed it but I think they realized that they would be putting people out of jobs and scratched the idea.

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Thats the way i roll with every pats game.Only turn it up when i want to know why a penalty was called for ex. I use to like simms at one time, but hes been un-bearable for a few years.

I think the officiating felt worse because there were a few questionable (or bad) calls, combined with the Pats taking some appropriately called penalties at really frustrating times (on touchdowns, or after 3rd down stops). There were really only three calls I had a problem with:

1) Butler PI - This was a brutally BAD call.

2a and 2b) The combination of offensive pass interference on Gronk and lack of OPI on a Giants receiver (can't remember which one) on an identical push off. Felt like the only reason Gronk got called was because he was big.

I don't see conspiracy though. I just think pass interference is a stupidly hard penalty to get right consistently as the rules are currently written.

sieglo said:

The officiating

I don't usually complain, but just wow. Just miserable.

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What? Just because we're openly at war with the league and we happen to be playing one of the Commissioner's favorite teams (with him in attendance). Surely, you don't think that's going to influence the officiating, do you?

How about the head shot to Chandler? Let's not forget that.

anditsgood said:

At times, it appeared they were letting them play, others, seems like they were throwing the flag for simply being in the area of the receiver.....

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...almost like they had made up their mind before the event that they were going to throw a flag.

The games are rigged, of course. In this case the game was not rigged for the Giants to win, but to cover.

For all you pollyanna's who say the games are not rigged, how many millions were gambled on last night's game and how much are the refs paid?

Giants strategy on 3rd downs was basically throw it up in the air and hope for a catch or PI.

Gronk is not the beneficiary of many calls. It's like a hack a Shaq out there with him where defenders hang off him like a jungle gym and now they are flopping.

VrabelJr said:

Our Secondary got shafted. That's all I'm going to say. I'm glad Roger was in attendance to witness first hand the mettle of this team.

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Are you kidding me? Everytime the Pats get a penalty, he probably smiles/chuckles.

They got the proper call on review that they needed on the Butler strip of Beckham, who was complaining about it after the game; one of the NY writers this morning actually hinted without coming right out and saying it that OBJ might have been getting ready to hold the ball out in celebration instead of bringing it into his body, thus giving Butler the chance to knock it out before he got both feet firmly down and made a football move.

I thought the Gronk call could have gone either way...personally, I thought he pushed off in frustration and that it was a fair call.

A couple of other calls were ticky tack, but all in all I'm not complaining.

FredFromDartmouth said:

The games are rigged, of course. In this case the game was not rigged for the Giants to win, but to cover.

For all you pollyanna's who say the games are not rigged, how many millions were gambled on last night's game and how much are the refs paid?

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Just out of curiosity, precisely who is rigging the games? The public's money was on New York, so the bookies wanted the Patriots to win and cover.

So was it a big time gambler who bet so much on NY that he needed to bribe the refs?