Should NFL adopt a review system to help poor refereeing? | Sunday Night Blitz
Yahoo Sports’ Jason Fitz and Frank Schwab hop on “Sunday Night Blitz” Podcast to discuss the ending of the Kansas City Chiefs and Green Bay Packers game, and debate if the league needs to make a change to help the referees get more calls correct.
Hear the full conversation on “Sunday Night Blitz” - part of the “Zero Blitz” podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JASON FITZ: I just watched some of the worst officiating I can remember, and it happened in a Sunday Night Football game. We have just watched the Packers take down the Chiefs. It was an incredible game, a lot to break down. But here's the real question, how are there so many refs that are so bad at their job at the highest possible level?
FRANK SCHWAB: Look, I always stick up for the refs. I do, because the job is incredibly hard. Look, the game moves at the speed of light. I'm shocked that they get any calls right.
That said, in the last two minutes alone, tonight, there were just egregious missed calls, and it started with that really, really bad unnecessary roughness on Patrick Mahomes when he wasn't even out of bounds. He's trying to pick up extra yards. He's playing football still.
Yes, he is near the sideline, and he got hit really hard. That's not a flag. It is not a penalty to hit a quarterback hard anymore, like that still is football, 15 yards there.
Then you get kind of a make up call after that on this horrible defensive pass interference that was missed downfield. I mean, clearly, they're ahead of time. Then you had what I thought, anyway, and the Packers, the entire sideline did, Rashee Rice is going backwards. And they still stop the clock.
The Packers sideline is going apoplectic. I'm like, what's going on here? The clock is supposed to keep running. They stop the clock, because you can't stop the clock when the ball carrier is going backwards. But that happened.
And then the final play of the game, I don't know how you feel about that Hail Mary. There was clearly a shove. You can call it if you want. You're very rarely going to get that call. I mean, what do you do when the officiating is this bad, Fitz? Like, I mean, there's four calls I just called out right now in the final two minutes of a Sunday night game.
JASON FITZ: And Sunday night is a key part of this, because it's a national audience. And everybody's paying attention to it, right? And here's the thing. The NFL fixes the problems they want to fix, and they fix them quickly. When there's a real issue, they come together, and they say, hey, we're going to change this.
My thing is, why have they not just figured out an eye in the sky? Like, to me, if there's anything we learned from the XFL process is that review can happen quickly. And you can't tell me in modern technology that there isn't a way to have somebody up in the booth that buzzes down after a call, like that out of bounds, or the roughing the passer call particularly, or the missed pass interference. There's got to be a way to buzz the hip and say, hey, we're reversing the call. I mean, at some point, we have to be better, which means we have to demand better, which means the league needs to put technology in place that allows better.
FRANK SCHWAB: Well, you know what the problem is, and I'm calling everybody out when they had the one year, where we had pass interference was reviewable. Remember that? And everybody could play. No, we can't get this right. We got to get rid of this. We can't.
That's why we can't do that, Fitz, because they couldn't have reviewed that play on MVS when he got clearly interfered with, because you, the person listening here who complained about all those pass interference reviews that one season, you're the reason it's gone. I've always been for the Belichick model, and for people who are unfamiliar, it's very simple. You can review anything.
Bill Belichick has always said, this is the way it should be. You can throw your red flag three times during a game. And people go, oh, the game is going to be six hours.
You don't get any more challenges, but when you throw that review flag, you can say, look for holding out the left tackle. I saw it. They've got to make these calls in real time. It's very difficult, but we, because we complain so much about it, took away the ability of the rest of review things, like pass interference.