Botched call in NFC title game brought intense scrutiny and NFLPA worries gambling will make it worse – for players

ATLANTA – Nearly two weeks ago, when one of the biggest calls in the history of the NFL playoffs was blown during the NFC title game between the New Orleans Saints and Los Angeles Rams, the players’ union saw a prime example of reasons to worry about where the league is headed in the coming years.

Not on the instant replay frontier.

Not with tweaks to officiating.

And not even within potential rule shifts.

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Instead, some in the NFLPA saw an example of how one moment can alter an entire Super Bowl landscape, leading to the kind of scrutiny where normal football plays (or mistakes) become a focal point of suspicion inside a gambling culture expected to deepen around the NFL in the coming years. As gambling tied to the NFL ramps up in the coming seasons, how could that impact players involved in game-shifting (or score-shifting) moments?

“We start talking about gambling, I don’t want a guy to – I hate to say it – miss a field goal, or give up a pass at the end, or a guy gets by them at the end of a game, and then all the sudden he’s the subject of an investigation on a gambling [suspicion],” union president Eric Winston said Thursday, during the NFLPA’s annual Super Bowl address. “That’s football. That’s why we love the sport. That’s why we see it happen. When we start talking about that [gambling] stuff, obviously there is injury reporting [information], you can come up with a list of 20 things that could be subject to that [concern]. We’ve talked about it. How do we protect the [players] first? Everything else becomes a distant second.”

By now, the offending play in the NFC title game has been turned inside out over the past two weeks: Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman wasn’t flagged for a blatant pass interference against the Saints late in the game, arguably costing New Orleans a berth into Super Bowl LIII. It was an unquestionable error that could be blamed only on officiating. But as time has moved forward, the mistake has also provided a not-so-subtle window into some of the suspicions and potential conspiracies the NFL is wading into.

That reality that was on full display in an ESPN report late last week, which claimed there was “concern in league circles” about the fact that the game’s four officials all had ties to Southern California and “were the ones most responsible for the non-call” for the blown call in the title game. The inference in the report wasn’t hard to decode. Essentially, you’ve got four officials with ties to the Los Angeles area who are suddenly involved in a moment that became extremely beneficial for the Rams. And, well, that doesn’t look good for the NFL, particularly when the Saints’ fan base was looking for every reason (or conspiracy) to skewer the league for the mistake.

But for the NFL Players Association, when that moment is taken in the broader context of what gambling will mean for the players, there are some obvious concerns. What if it was a player who was most responsible for a play so impactful? Because it’s a game where players often suffer critical failures at critical times, it raises concerns about how the actions of players will be viewed when gambling – and particularly play-by-play micro-betting – takes the deeper root into games that is expected in the coming years. In a future environment where you will likely be able to bet on virtually anything in an NFL game, down to whether an opening kickoff will be driven out of the end zone, the question of oversight and what it means becomes a huge question.

That’s precisely what the NFLPA is concerned about. At the moment, there is already the specter of injury information (which the NFL currently safeguards) becoming more highly monetized by the gambling community. But micro-betting could result in every single play being under a more significant microscope, born out of every play becoming a potential gambling opportunity. And at the moment, the NFL isn’t saying much about the future of gambling, let alone how it could impact the players who will shoulder more scrutiny than ever.

“Everybody when we start talking about gambling skips to the [revenue producing] side,” Winston said. “I think the most important thing when we start about the idea of gambling and this whole issue is protecting the players. And making sure that their privacy and their rights are their rights. …

“No guy should ever get off a field and say, ‘Oh my God, are they going to investigate me’ because I gave up a sack at the end of a game in a two-minute drill. No guy should ever have to go out there, even carrying the burden he already does, and say, ‘Oh, now I have to carry more of a burden.’ We’ve got to make sure that is off the table, that we have solutions to that before we even start going down these other roads.”

As it stands, the NFLPA says it doesn’t have a solution for the potential problem. But it wants the NFL to put aside the focus on future revenue streams tied to gambling and start talking about how it can prevent players from even more scrutiny than is already necessary.

“We [have to] get a bunch of smart guys in the room and we sit down and start figuring it out,” Winston said. “I wish I had every answer. That would be great. But it’s got to be a dialogue.”

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