Quote:
Originally Posted by Rain Man
I really wish there was an overhead shot of this to see exactly where he was lined up. He may be in the neutral zone, but for crying out loud he's looking directly at the ball. How is he lined up wrong?
There were four game-changing calls in the first half that completely altered the outcome.
There was the completely wrong call against Breeland that resulted in a touchdown for the other team. There's zero doubt that the call was wrong. It's a bright line. It was not a penalty according to the NFL rulebook. I can see where the official could have screwed up honestly, though. When I saw the play live it looked like Breeland was beat and tackled the guy. That's not at all what happened, but since the official on that side of the field is not the top of the profession, I can see an honest mistake happening.
There was the neutral zone call above. It's frustrating that the same official only seems to see neutral zone violations on key plays. Maybe Mecole is over the line, because Mecole played pretty much the worst Super Bowl game ever played.
There was the call that negated Matthieu's interception and cost the Chiefs a possession. I need to see that one again to make a judgment on whether it was a legit call that would have been called on other plays.
There was the call in the end zone on Matthieu. Did that one result in a score or was that the goal line stand? Either way, I think most reasonable people didn't see contact that was worthy of a penalty.
It would be nice to figure out which officials made those specific calls. Was there a pattern in one official making all of the questionable calls? We know this officiating group is not the best in the league and they were there for reasons unrelated to their performance, but how weak are they as a group?
That said, the Chiefs were not good yesterday. They dropped two touchdown passes that would have made them competitive and probably had less than a 50 percent chance of winning on their own merits. But it would have been nice if they weren't down 20 points early because of the above four calls to give them that chance.
|
Oh, for sure. No doubt about it. At half time, I was saying that was the single most referee-affected game I had ever seen.