Officiating And Rules A Part Of The Cause Of Our Season...

[FenixFalcon]

Normally I laugh at the comments made by folks about the refs singling out teams and doing a very piss poor job calling obvious penalties, but I think most would agree our officiating in the NFL this year has been pretty awful lately. Obviously I'm not going to say we lost any games due to officiating, but I would argue they've played a role in some of our games and we've wound up on the wrong end of some lackluster calls this season.

Take Beasley for instance. A lot of folks say his production has been awful this season. Given that he is a rookie and has been making a lot of mental errors I would agree to a certain extent. The guy has the physical talent but he has caused some of our defensive issues this year, namely unecessary penalties and I'll admit the spin move every other snap gets old. He got some serious pressure last week and only missed out on 2 sacks because Bridgewater is an elusive little *******, and another because Beasley couldn't finish the play. That being said, I see him tripled and held A LOT. Same could be said about a couple of our other guys.

Trufant, who is very cerebral and doesnt make a whole lot of mental errors has been getting some awful ticky tack calls on him too. Adams and Allen have been on the wrong end of some too, some very costly ones that I'd say are pretty ridiculous calls. Ones that have us going from 3rd and 9+ on their 45 yard line to our 2 yard line with a 1st down.

Now I know we've been awful on offense due to TOs and bad on getting off the field on 3rd downs when it counts on D but I do know we have been thrown into a lot of 3rd and longs this year on screens, passes and some very good runs where we would've gotten 1st downs. A lot of these calls are very iffy and more often than not it seems like our drives stall or continue due to penalties being thrown around on 3rd and shorts. This has stifled our offense's production massively. Argument could be said a lot of other teams in the league have been suffering this as well but I just feel like when we end up with a 3rd down or a TD run I'm constantly expecting a flag to be thrown on us.

I think the league needs to look into this pretty seriously during the off season if not right now to get this straightened out. There are a ton of mistakes being made by referee crews that are drastically changing the results of football games, ones that even the league won't argue were mistakes. This also goes for getting everyone on the same page with these weird rules (for example the "definition of what constitutes a catch"). This has got to stop if the league wants to garner any respect in the future. We ended up with a few of those kind of results last year. Look at the Detroit game in London last season...would've won the division and went into the playoffs whether or not carolina beat us last year had we been able to decline a stupid penalty on the lions when they missed a field goal kick as time expired. Here's an article on nfl. com about Morelli's crew being reassigned due to another bad officiating game called by the zebras on the cards/niners game:

Referee crew reassigned by NFL after mistakes

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In yet another example of the NFL punishing referees for mistakes made during a game, the league has reassigned referee Pete Morelli and his crew, a person familiar with the decision told NFL Media's Albert Breer on Tuesday.

Morelli's crew was scheduled to work Sunday night's tilt between the Indianapolis Colts and the Pittsburgh Steelers, but they will now officiate an afternoon game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the New England Patriots in Foxborough, Massachusetts.

Pro Football Talk initially reported the development.

Morelli's group was the subject of much criticism for calls made during the Cardinals' win over the 49ers. Arizona head coach Bruce Arians made public statements about their inefficiency after the crew missed several calls and took long periods of time to reach a consensus on others.

"The officials were struggling," Arians said, via The Arizona Republic. "Mightily. They can't count to three."

Added 49ers safety Eric Reid: "(I don't normally complain about refs) but, man, there were some questionable calls, some very questionable ones. But what can you do? They throw the flags and thereâs nothing you can do about it."

Rob Vernatchi, who was part of Morelli's crew, was already suspended this year for a clock error during a prime-time game between the Steelers and Chargers.

This is just one example. There have been several this year the league has admitted to and thus far has done nothing about. Blandino seems lost for words and out of apologies from all the flack he's been getting. I'm sure the competition commitee and team owners are getting frustrated with it as well.

Just food for though but I wanted to shed some light and hit y'all with some knowledge on what part of the effect of our season has come from. This doesn't by any means discount the ridiculous amount of turnovers nor the play calling or lacking performances of our superstars, but it is a factor no less that should be fixed by the league immediately.

Edited December 2, 2015 by FenixFalcon

[papachaz]

I read the article earlier today and immediately thought of the 'clipping' penalty that brought back the TD sunday. And how many times have we seen facemasks on our guys not called? or our guys called for roughness, when on either our previous or next drive on offense, we see Matt get buried and it not called?

I'm not one of those 'the refs got us' guys, because I think if you're going to win, you should win regardless, but when there's enough of those calls/non calls in a game, yeah it can swing the outcome

[JDaveG]

I'm just glad to see them reassigned. I'd prefer a more substantial punishment, but the officiating is terrible this year, and really has been for a while.

I'm still peeved about the Saints "it's not intentional grounding because it was a screen pass" horse**** call.

Not to mention the interception on Roddy a couple of years ago where the corner blasted him off the route before the ball ever got there.

[FenixFalcon]

I read the article earlier today and immediately thought of the 'clipping' penalty that brought back the TD sunday. And how many times have we seen facemasks on our guys not called? or our guys called for roughness, when on either our previous or next drive on offense, we see Matt get buried and it not called?

I'm not one of those 'the refs got us' guys, because I think if you're going to win, you should win regardless, but when there's enough of those calls/non calls in a game, yeah it can swing the outcome

Agreed. I'm not one of these "refs, please pity us and help us win" guys like some are, but I want our guys to be able to play football on defense and get the obvious penalties called on opposing defenses. At the very least we need consistency in the officiating. You call something for one team, you need to call it on the other.

[FenixFalcon]

I'm just glad to see them reassigned. I'd prefer a more substantial punishment, but the officiating is terrible this year, and really has been for a while.

I'm still peeved about the Saints "it's not intentional grounding because it was a screen pass" horse**** call.

Not to mention the interception on Roddy a couple of years ago where the corner blasted him off the route before the ball ever got there.

Obvious PI on Roddy in the NFC CCGs final minutes on 4th was pretty ridiculous too.

[A Dog Named Brian]

Agreed. I'm not one of these "refs, please pity us and help us win" guys like some are, but I want our guys to be able to play football on defense and get the obvious penalties called on opposing defenses. At the very least we need consistency in the officiating. You call something for one team, you need to call it on the other.

What really torqued me off about the clipping call was when the announcer piped up and said something along the lines of "that's almost never called" Then I thought, "it's the Falcons, of course they are going to throw the flag....."

Edited December 2, 2015 by A Dog Named Brian

[falconsd56]

This is something that is often overlooked.

There are penalties you can control... jumping off sides, false start, lining up in the neutral zone etc, but far too many of the judgement calls are not going our way.

The colts had a drive where every single first down came because of penalties......and a couple were questionable at best.

On sunday you saw Tru flagged that was borderline but you saw Newman and other viking players LITERALLY grab Julios jersey and pulled it away from his body.... yet no call.

I made a thread about Ryan getting hit below the knees vs the niners on multiple occasions yet no call but Wheeler gets a called when he had a perfectly legal hit.

[falconsd56]

I'm just glad to see them reassigned. I'd prefer a more substantial punishment, but the officiating is terrible this year, and really has been for a while.

I'm still peeved about the Saints "it's not intentional grounding because it was a screen pass" horse**** call.

Not to mention the interception on Roddy a couple of years ago where the corner blasted him off the route before the ball ever got there.

I had never seen refs literally make **** up before that game.

[raysnill1]

I thought the unnecessary roughness call on Ward was stupid. he was tackled in a way that his body was under the tackler's body feet up. what looked like a kick was just him trying to get up, and the flag wasn't thrown by the ref that was standing like 3 feet away, it was thrown from like 30 yards away

[paulitik]

I've seen at least 6 TDs taken away from us on blown calls or missed. Freeman's reach over the end zone, ruled not a catch. Julio crossing the Pylon. Coleman's TD with Moeaki's BS "clipping", There was one by Hankerson, and another by Julio. A few of the bad INTs and Fumbles.happened after these bad calls. We've had a few drops that should've been TDs too. Coleman's drop the other day. Hankerson and Tamme have dropped a couple in the end zone.

Matt's numbers would be looking a lot better if the 5 TD passes hadn't been taken away. 21 TDs and 12 INTs would be a lot more palatable than 16 and 12..

[JDaveG]

I've seen at least 6 TDs taken away from us on blown calls or missed. Freeman's reach over the end zone, ruled not a catch. Julio crossing the Pylon. Coleman's TD with Moeaki's BS "clipping", There was one by Hankerson, and another by Julio. A few of the bad INTs and Fumbles.happened after these bad calls. We've had a few drops that should've been TDs too. Coleman's drop the other day. Hankerson and Tamme have dropped a couple in the end zone.

Matt's numbers would be looking a lot better if the 5 TD passes hadn't been taken away. 21 TDs and 12 INTs would be a lot more palatable than 16 and 12..

21 and 11. Because at least one (the one yesterday) wouldn't have been an INT if we'd scored the TD.

[raysnill1]

21 and 11. Because at least one (the one yesterday) wouldn't have been an INT if we'd scored the TD.

22 & 10, one came after the called back TD to Julio

[PriMeTiiMe]

On sunday you saw Tru flagged that was borderline but you saw Newman and other viking players LITERALLY grab Julios jersey and pulled it away from his body.... yet no call.

This pissed me off more than anything during the game this past week.

Julio was getting borderline raped and no flags but the second we touched a vikings WR it was thrown.

[falconsrus]

Some Humans and Zebras $#*^K

[PokerSteve]

I'm one of the ones you mention who has made threads denigrating the NFL officials and accusing them of being particularly abusive of the Falcons and biased against them. Believe me when I say I've seen the refs literally screw the Falcons out of big plays and chances to win dozens and dozens and dozens of games.

The only time they lightened up on us was when we were going 13-3 and we briefly got some respect. That was the exception to what I think any objective observer would conclude has been a consistent pattern of blatant unfairness which has materially damaged this team and hurt its record since the franchise first was created.

But forget about anything ever getting done about it. That's not the way things work for us. In fact, the officiating in general is inevitably going to get even worse due to ref turnover and the ever-burgeoning rule book.