For most of my life, my Sunday after-church tradition has been set: change clothes, eat lunch, and then plant myself on the couch for a day full of NFL action. Recently, however, the NFL has started to become unwatchable, as yellow handkerchiefs litter the field at obnoxious rates, all while the league is continuously forced to admit blown calls by their officials.
After only one week of play in the 2015 season, the NFL admitted two key missed calls in the New York Giants vs. Dallas Cowboys game. One was an unwarranted pass interference call late in the game that changed a key third-down stop by the Giants into a first-and-goal situation for the Cowboys, resulting in the eventual game-winning touchdown.
This is not, however, an isolated incident. This season there has been an average of almost 18 penalties accepted per game, which is up from 14.8 in 2013.
That’s three more times referees stop the game, gather together, deliberate, and then make a potentially game-changing call.
Unfortunately, even when these officials do come together to deliberate, they often still get it wrong. Detroit Lions fans know this all too well.
The Lions’ week-four game against the Seattle Seahawks was followed by an apology, as the league admitted that the officials missed an illegal batting call, as Seahawk K.J. Wright knocked a Calvin Johnson fumble out of the back of the endzone.
This kind of batting, which is prohibited by rule 12.8.1, should have given the ball back to the Lions with inches to goal. Instead, the Seahawks were given a touchback, and they finished the game in victory formation.
This marked yet another game which could have yielded a different victor had the rules been correctly enforced.
As a Chicago Bears fan, I was appalled by the week-six game between the Bears and Lions, which seemed to have three teams on the field: One in white, one in orange, and one in stripes.
The team in stripes called a total of 19 penalties, which resulted in 174 yards, almost as many yards as were compiled by either offense.
It was impossible to watch more than a few minutes without seeing the bright yellow “flag” icon light up the screen.
The NFL seems to have forgotten that football is a physical sport, especially when it comes to star quarterbacks.
Defensive players have become so afraid of the exorbitant penalties and heavy-handed fines — 13 of which were greater than $17,000 in 2014 — that the NFL might as well give quarterbacks red jerseys and put flags on their waists.
Of course, the league should be making an effort to reduce the number of injuries, especially to the head, but they have taken it too far, and largely in the wrong direction. We should see these penalties when there is a legitimate dirty hit, not anytime that feet get tangled up on a pass.
This past Sunday we saw a number of star players sustain injuries, including Steve Smith, Le’Veon Bell, Matt Forte, and Reggie Bush. None of these injuries came on the type of plays that the NFL is cracking down on, such as helmet-to-helmet contact or pass interference. Rather, they came on legal football plays that happened to end in a knee or ankle turning the wrong way.
Even the play on which Seattle Seahawk Ricardo Lockette was leveled and knocked unconscious, resulting in a concussion and season-ending surgery, did not yield a penalty, much to the credit of the officiating crew. The block was clean, but it had a scary result. This is, unfortunately, a fact of a contact sport like football.
I would love to continue spending my Sundays in front of a TV watching the NFL for years to come, but if the officials continue to dominate the sport I will be forced to change the channel. These are grown men, playing a man’s sport. Let them play it.
