SB LVI shines light on NFL officiating problems
This is the opinion of Jake McCormick.
America’s game has officially passed, and with it goes the more tolerable half of the year.
Super Bowl LVI was certainly a success for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and the 32 incredibly wealthy owners who pay his bills and feed his children. Game viewership, which clocked in at roughly 112 million, increased from last year’s record low and came far closer to the game’s viewership record of 114 million.
Yet despite near-record viewership and the attention of the entire world, New York still found a way to make us question why humanity even bothered inventing instant replay.
For the last several years, any play that’s remotely close on the field has been reviewed by a team of officials in New York, ostensibly with easier access to the technology necessary to get the call right.
It’s why every on-field official has worn a headset and radio since 2014; it’s why they pretend to debate one another in the middle of the field for five minutes (New York is slow); and it’s why, generally speaking, the shield is right more often than it used to be.
Why then are we pretending like they’re not reviewing every single play in New York? Why are we pretending “the booth” didn’t watch Tee Higgins drag Jalen Ramsey to the ground via his facemask during the former’s 75-yard touchdown on the first play of the second half?
I refuse to believe that New York somehow wasn’t paying attention. There are two calls made on every single NFL play, one in New York and one on the field, which forces me to conclude several things about the NFL’s replay process.
First, and perhaps most problematic, there is clearly not a standard process for determining when the official call will be the one made in New York or the one made on the field.
The obvious problem with this is that plays are subject to conflicting levels of scrutiny, seemingly at random. Some plays are subject to a rule book enforceable by the millisecond, and others are subject to one enforceable by the human eye alone.
Players are incentivized to try whatever they feel they can get away with because even when they try their hardest to play clean, the instant replay monster can always find a flag, the same way it can always ignore one.
Second, despite having the power to get it right, the NFL is deliberately missing calls even during the Super Bowl’s biggest moments.
Higgins’s missed face mask against Ramsey could’ve easily been the game’s deciding play, and the NFL would be forced to condemn one of its on-field officiating crews for the second time this postseason.
Goodell is lucky the Rams ended up winning. While LA seems largely uninterested in their new team (because they’re all still Raiders fans), Hollywood would’ve never let Goodell hear the end of it.
There are two calls made on every play in the NFL, one made using the power of instant replay and one made on the field. In any situation where those two calls conflict with one another, the official call must be the one made in New York.
