There should be fantasy camps to go through NFL officiating training. It's a difficult job, they make way less money than anyone else we see on TV, and maybe they'd catch less heat if we all had first-hand experience of their training. This occurs to me after a weekend featuring just two close games, but some are blaming officials for both of them.
Granted, if you watch the NFL on a regular basis, you know these guys make lots of mistakes. My personal pet peeves involve officials running up from 10 yards behind the play to make a key spot they couldn't possibly get right, and spotting balls short of the goal line on virtually every play where it's not blatantly obvious the guy got in -- where he lands flat on his back in the end zone.
But I feel for the guy who blew the early whistle in the Bengals-Raiders game, since you know the NFL drills the idea of protecting quarterbacks at all costs into those guys' heads (he blew the whistle to maybe protect Burrow from taking a punishing hit near the sideline). And the guy at the end of Dallas-San Francisco, a sequence that looked bad to the average fan ("Why is he steamrolling the center?") but in fact the guy was just doing his job.
Plenty to unpack in these games, and we'll talk officiating too.
Bengals 26, Raiders 19. Really nice game to have a kicker going in, amiright? I switched out Daniel Carlson last minute in an FFPC playoff where you get one player from each team (12 of 14) throughout the entire playoffs, that hurts. But at least I started Evan McPherson in another competition. Lots of field goals in this game. But I understand all anyone wants to talk about is the second quarter play that had the Raiders playing catch up the rest of the way. I heard the whistle live, and since I'm handy with the freeze frame, I could see that it obviously came before the TD reception. Play should have been negated. That's not to say the Bengals wouldn't have scored on the ensuing play anyway, and you can't look at it and say, If they'd settled for a field goal, Las Vegas would only have needed a field goal at the end...because the rest of the game would have gone differently. (Most notably, Cincinnati would likely have gone for it on 4th and 1 near the goal line rather than kicking a field goal that would have only put them up 6.) But yeah, the refs blew it.
Unfortunate, because 1) I think the pass would have been completed anyway without the whistle; Raiders players who stopped in the end zone might have stopped simply thinking Burrow was out of bounds, not because of the whistle, and I'm not sure they'd have got there anyway. And 2) It was an incredible play by Burrow which is sadly overshadowed by the controversy. Burrow had a great game, so did JaMarr Chase, Bengals D had some nice moments too. For the Raiders, you'd like to see the game-ending play going somewhere but a double-covered Zay Jones who wasn't even in the end zone anyway. But a pretty entertaining game, and congrats to the Bengals for finally getting that elusive playoff win. I think they might be able to get another next week.
Bills 47, Patriots 17. No officiating controversy in this one. Talked a little about this yesterday, but the gist is that it's tough to win a game if you allow your opponent to drive for touchdowns every time they have the ball. Biggest play though was a defensive one, an acrobatic interception in the end zone by Micah Hyde that broke up a solid throw that would have made for a 7-7 contest that might have been interesting. (But probably not, because again, there were no stops of the Bills offense all game.) Patriots offense didn't have much chance, and again if your big three wideouts are Jakobi Meyers, Nelson Agholor and Kendrick Bourne, it's possible you need to address that area in the offseason, maybe with actually really good players rather than giving big contracts to journeymen and having everyone think, Hmm, the Patriots must see something in those guys that no one is smart enough to see... One more thing: What took the Bills so long to start featuring Devin Singletary? I had this guy sitting on a bench for most of the season in a league, would have been nice to be able to use him in October and November.
Bucs 31, Eagles 15. Philadelphia's offense did absolutely nothing for most of this game, while Tampa Bay moved the ball up and down the field at will for a lot of it. Some talk about Tom Brady getting the benefit of a roughing the passer call, which I guess is valid but whatever. Most star quarterbacks get these calls, that's today's NFL, and the real story from this game, which we discussed a little coming in, is that Philadelphia marched into the playoffs on the strength of a string of easy wins against crummy offenses from the Broncos, Saints, Giants, Jets and Washington multiple times. Whereas the AFC playoff field left out a good Chargers team, the NFC field quite clearly brought in at least one too many teams, which is gonna happen when you let almost half the teams into the playoffs. Bucs can sit back and watch tonight's game and host them next week, for which the biggest question will be if their offensive line is healthy, but they'll be favored a good shot to advance regardless (they're no doubt glad the Packers will be hosting San Francisco).
49ers 23, Cowboys 17. So yes, I picked this "upset," but I don't take a lot of pride in it because it's not the least bit surprising, many people did and most should have. Dallas played its best ball the first half of the season, San Francisco the second half. Dallas has a questionable coaching staff (yes I realize Kellen Moore might get a head coaching job somewhere), San Francisco has a Shanahan. Dallas had a veteran running back playing through a partially torn PCL, evidently, while San Francisco had one of the season's better rookie runners. Dallas had either underachieving or underutilized star wideouts, San Francisco had one of the season's best utilized receiver/runners in Deebo Samuel. Dallas had the league's two best defensive playmakers in Trevon Diggs and Micah Parsons, but San Francisco actually had the tougher all-around defense from top to bottom. I could go on, but I won't.
After the 49ers dominated most of this game, because (as expected) Mike McCarthy and his coaching staff bring very little to the table and seemed to think their 50-plus points down the stretch against Washington and Philadelphia would just carry over to this one, they made a couple of miscues, including a horrible interception by Jimmy Garoppolo, to let Dallas back into the game. What then ensued was one of the more frustrating 7 minutes of football no matter who you were rooting for.
San Francisco punted on a 4th and 1 at midfield that I personally would have gone for, because they'd have gotten it. They got the ball back, and ran one of the all-time great 3rd and long plays with Deebo to pick up the first down, only an interminable review, mildly questionable re-spot, AND a clock screw-up that nobody in the booth or on the field noticed (the Samuel run play started at 1:21; somehow the play itself, re-starting the 40 second clock, and the ensuing punt enabled Dallas to start its next drive just 48 seconds later, which was off by a good 15 seconds) put Dallas in decent shape to mount a final drive for a Hail Mary attempt. Presumably, but no, Dallas thought running the ball for 10-15 yards up the middle, with no timeouts, to set up a 25-yard throw into the end zone rather than a 40-yard one, was worth the risk of the clock expiring. Which it did.
Watching the play, it looked like Prescott had a brain lock on his foolish scramble that at best had a 50-50 chance of being completed before the clock expired. Because no coaching staff would actually call that type of play there, right? But no, McCarthy confirms that not only did they call it, they practice it every week! Really, every week you practice a quarterback run to pick up an extra 10 yards before basically throwing a jump ball into the end zone? Because that's what it will be whether the line of scrimmage is the 25 or the 40. And if you practice it every week, was it mentioned to players that the ball needs to be handed to the official? Because that would be worth spending a moment or two on.
Would it have been nice if the official were closer, sooner? Yes. I suppose we can't excuse them for perhaps being dumbstruck by an idiotic quarterback draw by a team trailing by 6 points with no timeouts left with minimal upside and game-losing downside. Anyway, a colossally bad ending to a playoff game, but I will argue with anyone who doesn't think the better team won. (Although they really should have won by more than 6.)
Kansas City 42, Steelers 21. This was interesting for about a quarter and a half, until suddenly (pretty much from the Darrel Williams fumble and Steelers defensive touchdown on) Kansas City flipped a switch and the Steelers looked like they had no business being in the playoffs. Which, you know... From that point forward Patrick Mahomes had open receiver after open receiver, play after play after play. It looked like Pittsburgh's secondary forgot how to cover people or something; it was ugly. And tackling Jerick McKinnon also seemed to be an afterthought. I hope that Williams' absence from the rest of the game was because he was hurt and not benched after the fumble, which was a stupid Wildcat type play, since I've got a playoff team that might need him. But clearly I'm not optimistic about a featured role for Darrel in any upcoming games.
Couple of early drops by Diontae Johnson. I guess the statistics show he was much better in that regard this year than in the past, and I won't argue that, but I will say that I apparently witnessed every single drop he had all season, because there seemed to be a lot. Pittsburgh has much bigger fish to fry with a new quarterback, presumably overhauled offensive line, etc. But a No. 1 wide receiver with a tendency to drop key 3rd down passes is also a concern. Kansas City moves on to play Buffalo in what sure looks like the key AFC game the rest of the game, no offense to Tennessee and Cincinnati.
Monday, Monday: So with the slight exception of 3-point underdog San Francisco winning, although that wasn't actually surprising, the first five games all went as expected. I guess a Cardinals upset would qualify as an upset, but since they beat the Rams once during the season, it wouldn't be a stunner. I'm expecting a high-scoring game, looking for a nice game from Stafford (or Murray; I haven't 100 percent decided) in a use-each-player-only-once competition to take over 1st place, and expecting the Rams to have a little more on offense and defense in this one. Rams 31, Cardinals 24.