The NFL Needs Common Sense Referee Reform

How many games will be marred by late penalties before the league implements some sort of mechanism to overturn bad calls?

I hate to be this person. Absolutely hate it. The reason? Fans have a painfully deep and detailed memory of every call that has gone against their club dating back to forever, and so bringing up the moment when a call—or, in the case of the Browns a series of egregious calls—benefits a team immeasurably can open up a fire hose of whataboutism that would tear a skin off a rhinoceros.

But let’s be clear: I am not here to complain about the Browns winning a football game. If I could have constructed a Madden roster that somehow beats a skilled NFL opponent merely with the usage of one superhuman defensive end, I would still be in my parents’ basement trying to unglue my hands from a PlayStation controller (instead of being in my own basement writing about football). My thoughts on Deshaun Watson aside, the Browns have created a kind of chaos-proof football team. Even when the best defense in football gives up almost 40 points to Gardner Minshew, there they are, gobbling up St. Elmo’s on the plane ride home, toasting another how-did-we-do-this? victory. Replacement-level quarterback play will land this team in the conference title game.

My problem is with a referee performance so bad that CBS house rules analyst Gene Steratore said something to the effect of: If I were in that huddle of referees, I would probably have continued the conversation.

Minshew and the Colts punched above their weight Sunday, but were done in by late penalties :: Jenna Watson/IndyStar/USA TODAY Network

When it comes to referee analysts, you have to read between the lines just like you would a statement from the queen of England. The real disdain is between the words. This is about as close as a former zebra will come to a full Vince Lombardi What the hell is going on here?

Amari Cooper drew a flag for getting his thigh pad touched, which negated a forced fumble. Donovan Peoples-Jones drew another one on a ball launched out of the back of the end zone. This pair of calls almost assuredly would have been rejected by a neutral observer in the booth with the ability to view what all of us were watching, that this crew was single-handedly clubbing at the knee a Colts team that was punching way above its weight class.

After the game, Colts coach Shane Steichen called the whole experience a character builder. I suppose that’s the only way to look at it without becoming a full-blown conspiracy theorist.

Ask the Jets and Sauce Gardner about the end of the Jets-Chiefs game. Ask a handful of other coaches this year. Here we are, in 2023, with enough technology to enable wireless convection baking, pet feeding and car driving, ignorant to what is happening right in front of us.

Here’s another guy I hate being: the this-game-is-rigged guy. I promise I’m not. While I haven’t microdosed with Arian Foster, I have seen enough NFL football at the sideline level to know what absolute chaos it is. It’s impossible to orchestrate fake wrestling. Just ask The Ultimate Warrior before SummerSlam. It’s even harder to orchestrate the fastest and most athletic human beings in the country. 

But the longer that the NFL avoids common sense reform when it comes to a sky judge or some other kind of mechanism that can overturn horrific calls in real time—hire Judge Judy, I really don’t care—the more this league enables the person none of us wants to become. The guy who posts screenshots of impacted FanDuel receipts. It’s sort of like how college football negated common sense measures to prevent signal stealing for so long because … maybe coaches like the ability to steal signals? What is stopping us from thinking that there is some nefarious reason behind human error that can clearly be fixed, but for some reason, won’t ever be?

I laugh about the argument that reviewing every penalty would make the game drag for too long. We watch football for 12 straight hours every Sunday, hot glued to our living room couches like starfish. We are the most sedentary we have ever been in the history of mankind. Where are we going instead? Outside?

It’s hard not to be deeply sympathetic to those who officiate football games. Light speed is a hard pace at which to judge anything. There are angles that are completely disadvantageous to the human eye, which likely impacted what we saw in the final minute at Lucas Oil Stadium on Sunday. It’s likely what we saw when Gardner greeted Marquez Valdes-Scantling in the secondary the way we might an aunt or cousin at Thanksgiving, but for one single moment looked threatening enough to throw a flag.

The issue continues to be what happens when those wrongs are left unadjusted. Brushed aside. Buried by double-talk from people who could flip a switch and have it look better tomorrow.

Instead, the NFL will be left with more cynics. More aluminum hats. More people none of us can stand, and none of us need to turn into.