Bear Digest

Bears and Officials Not Seeing Eye to Eye

For the second straight game numerous officials' calls were questioned by the Bears and their fans, and Detroit reaped a windfall in the flags department.

Gene Chamberlain

In this story:

At this rate, the Bears will soon know more about the rules than most officials in the NFL.

Some would suggest they already do.

For the second straight game, several officials calls set off fans on social media in a 31-30 loss Sunday to the Detroit Lions, a game in which there was a 9-2 discrepancy in penalty flags against the Bears.

A week earlier coach Matt Eberflus submitted film of pass interference calls—or what looked like pass interference—and got an apology from the league for a couple mistakes by the officials that decided the Miami game.

"It's really with any call, if you turn in a call that you think that you may disagree with—or you do disagree with—it's really about education," Eberflus said before the Lions game. "It's really about educating us for the rules and turning that and educating the players, saying 'we did play that the right way' or 'You can do something better going forward.'

"Those plays are over. They made those calls. Once they made them there’s nothing you can do about it. You can complain and whine about it, but that doesn't do any good. We want to learn from the situation."

There was plenty to learn Sunday.

  • Referee Land Clark's crew had a blatant pass interference against Alex Anzalone they missed at the start of the fourth quarter on a deep jump ball Justin Fields threw to Cole Kmet. At the time, the Bears led 24-10 and a scoring drive then puts away the game—provided Fields doesn't throw a second pick-6. There not only was premature contact with the defender's back to the ball but Kmet's left arm was initially held down when the ball went into the air so that he had to fight through to try to catch it. It was very similar to likewhat happened to Chase Claypool against Miami.
  •  An obvious offensive pass interference call was missed early in the game when Jared Goff swung the ball out to his left and two receivers were blocking well in advance of the pass.
  • Braxton Jones got flagged for a phantom holding call on a David Montgomery run that set the Bears up for first-and-goal at the 4 and they wound up settling for a field goal. The difference there in points wins the game and also takes Cairo Santos' iffy leg out of the equation from 22 yards.
  • Another very questionable hold on Ryan Griffin put the Bears in long down-and-distance, right before Fields threw the pick-6 to Jeff Okudah.
  • There was the fourth-quarter unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Kyler Gordon when he reached out and hit the ball, knocking it out of Jared Goff's hand as he ran out of bounds. Officials said he hit Goff late, but he actually hit the ball and got it out. Goff flopped and got the call even though Gordon had hit the ball. The replay showed as much. Goff got up with a nice smile on his face. That play triggered a drive that pulled the Lions within 24-17.

Then there was the worst call, one against Jaylon Johnson for illegal hands to the face when Jack Sanborn had intercepted Goff's pass to kill a Lions fourth-quarter drive.

It might have been a proper call if Johnson's face was located in his chest.  Lions receiver Trinity Benson should try to play in the Premier League because that was one classic flop.

Safety Eddie Jackson said he hadn't seen the penalty but didn't need to see it.

"But I heard it was a bad call. Another week of it," Jackson said

Jackson urged the Bears to be better than the officials, which probably shouldn't be too difficult based on the last two weeks.

"We already know how the calls go," Jackson said. "We can't do nothing about that and just do our job. Stay disciplined. I feel like some of them calls was kind of BS."

Now it's a matter of seeing which ones the Bears submit for the league so they can receiver their education for this week.

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

BearDigest.com publisher Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.

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