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- Oct 20, 2007
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No need to go full-on conspiracy theorist here. If the league wanted the Pats to lose, they could do it far more easily and less conspicuously. I believe that the rule was what it was, and technically it was an infraction and was flagged accordingly. It sounds like there was a lot of confusion on everyone's part, considering that Belichick had a different understanding of the rule and that it had never been flagged before leading up to that point.
And that's the real point: even if it was the correct ruling, it was a ridiculous call because they're choosing that time and that situation, 7 weeks into the season, to throw that flag for literally the first time ever. The top two goals of officiating should be consistency and making sure that you do not decide the game without overwhelming reason. In making that call they violated both of those goals to just about the maximum possible extent.
That said, yet again, we really just need to let it go. It was a bad call that decided a game, and that sucks. Next time a fan of an opposing team claims that the Pats get all of the calls, this is yet another instance that you can point to that proves them wrong. But a bad call does not mean--or even reasonably suggest-- that the NFL has an anti-Pats agenda. We've benefited from enough calls over the years to make that theory provably false. Furthermore, if you do believe that the league has an anti-Pats agenda, then you should probably just stop watching the NFL altogether, because what's the point of watching a sport that you honestly believe is fixed?
And that's the real point: even if it was the correct ruling, it was a ridiculous call because they're choosing that time and that situation, 7 weeks into the season, to throw that flag for literally the first time ever. The top two goals of officiating should be consistency and making sure that you do not decide the game without overwhelming reason. In making that call they violated both of those goals to just about the maximum possible extent.
That said, yet again, we really just need to let it go. It was a bad call that decided a game, and that sucks. Next time a fan of an opposing team claims that the Pats get all of the calls, this is yet another instance that you can point to that proves them wrong. But a bad call does not mean--or even reasonably suggest-- that the NFL has an anti-Pats agenda. We've benefited from enough calls over the years to make that theory provably false. Furthermore, if you do believe that the league has an anti-Pats agenda, then you should probably just stop watching the NFL altogether, because what's the point of watching a sport that you honestly believe is fixed?