I don’t usually like it when people call out referees.
It’s a tough job, regardless of the sport. You have to know the rule book inside and out (in theory) and apply it while the action on the field, court or whatever is moving quicker than most people can follow even with the help of slow-motion replays. From calling strikes in baseball to determining the precise moment a foul on the floor becomes a shooting foul, there’s little doubt that referees at all levels need to be commended for the work they do correctly.
The problem is, they rarely are. Referees are meant to be seen and not heard, in the sense that nobody actually wants to have to comment on them. If they do their job well, nobody cares, but if they blow a call, they’ll never hear the end of it.
Initially, I thought they blew the ending of the Bengals-Steelers game so badly it wasn’t funny. Clearly, Tyler Boyd’s knee was down, and the fumble should’ve been reversed. As a matter of fact, when it wasn’t, I may or may not have yelled a series of words unfit for print.
Then the Browns went and did what the Browns do, and I was able to reflect on the series of events that led to the Bengals dropping their first game of the season. I realized the problem was not that the referee got the replay wrong, it was that they got it right.
Let me be clear: I still firmly believe his knee was down before the ball came out. The problem is, no angle showed it clearly. While fans have taken to Twitter with screenshots that supposedly show clear angles, there’s no way of knowing if the referees even have access to those angles. Having never shoved my head underneath the hood, I can’t tell you if there are three cameras or 30, but I can tell you even the league doesn’t think they have enough, since as recently as November 2015 the NFL considered adding more cameras for replays.
The problem in the Bengals’ case was not that the call stood, it was that the call was a fumble to begin with. The NFL has three different types of replay rulings: confirmed, stands and reversed. The first and third ones are straightforward, with the second one being the key. The Boyd fumble stood. It was not confirmed, meaning there was no clear evidence to see the fumble. It was not overturned, meaning there was no clear evidence showing his knee was down. Instead, the call stood, which meant it defaulted to what the referees saw in live action. That’s not good enough.
If you have a replay system, this kind of ambiguity isn’t necessary. Instead of ruling it a fumble on the field, once the Steelers recovered the ball and were tackled, blow the whistle, walk over to the monitor and determine there who has possession. If the ball was fumbled, the Steelers get it where they were stopped. If not, the Bengals return to the field on offense.
The problem with this, of course, is in situations like Boyd’s where there is no way to definitively see what happens. The referees will likely have to guess, but at least in this scenario they’re guessing with the help of a frame-by-frame guide as opposed to live action.
It’s easy to understand why Bengals fans are upset with the officiating, given the way the rest of the game was called. Pass rushers were being put in choke holds as they rushed the quarterbacks, both quarterbacks were hit high and calls weren’t made, and the referees seemed more intent on showing the NFL that they could handle the Bengals-Steelers rivalry and make it a “clean game” than they were on actually calling penalties.
The officiating crew was terrible, even before the fumble, which they technically called correctly. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone who follows the NFL, since the head referee for the contest, Pete Morelli, has found himself in the crosshairs of angry fans from New Orleans to Baltimore last season.
In separate contests, Morelli’s crew ignored a running clock that should have been stopped, costing Pittsburgh 18 seconds. A side judge was suspended for that error.
Five weeks later, the crew missed a false start by Jacksonville, which should have ended the game. Instead, the Ravens lost on the next play.
They melted down completely two weeks after that in a game between the Arizona Cardinals and the San Francisco 49ers. They took a down away from Arizona, stopped the game for six minutes to figure out what down it was, and were criticized for their decision to call (or not call) certain penalties. The performance earned the crew a demotion, as they were removed from a prime-time game they were scheduled to referee the next week.
In their final act of futility, the crew decided to allow the Detroit Lions to call timeout late in the first half of a game the Lions led 21-3 against the Saints. New Orleans had the ball deep in Detroit territory, and just before the snap, the Lions took a timeout. They didn’t have one. The down would be replayed, because for some reason there is no penalty in the rulebook for taking a timeout you don’t have unless you’re trying to ice the kicker.
The strangest thing, in terms of the Bengals’ loss, is that they can’t blame the lack of calls on this crew. After last season, the NFL re-assigned every single member of Morelli’s crew to a different one, giving him an entirely fresh start this season. Was this just a bad week, or is another rough year for Morelli in store? Time will tell.
That said, it’s not completely fair to pin the loss on the referees, nor is it fair to say that if the Bengals had played better, they wouldn’t have been in that position to begin with.
You can’t justify bad officiating by simply blaming the team for not playing well enough, but you certainly can say the team has things to work on. Three trips to the red zone resulting in just nine points. The lack of a running game for a second straight week (though, to be fair, the Steelers and Jets are excellent defensive teams).
There are many, many reasons the Bengals lost the game. The referees, while certainly the easiest target, aren’t completely to blame. The team still has a long way to go this season if they want to win their first playoff game.