This is just a highlight but it's been soooo bad this year. And yes, it is worse this year. Across the league. I don't have wrong calls numbers but I would guess there would be some correlation between bad calls and sports betting going live trending together if plotted on a timeline.

Now, I don't know if these games are rigged of course. I do think the chance of at least some hedging on calls since the start of the Superbowl era are non-zero and lean towards likely.

Tonights Lions/Rams game and this call was just gross. Mind you this is after a lengthy review and consultation with NY. Even the on air rules commentator was speechless. His exact words. "I am speechless". There is no way, and I say this definitively, absolutely no way this play was called fairly but instead knowingly gave a false TD to the Rams. You can't look at this and say otherwise. You just can't.

Context: Rams player went down to knees on a pass route juggling the ball while sliding into endzone. Was ruled a TD on the field and reviewed of course. Review took a while and gave color commentators and rules expert time to talk it out. All think it's an easy overturn from the replay they are seeing on the jumbotrons. And it should be. Call comes back. Upheld. All three are stunned. As well as I.

Ok, I feel slightly better with the rant.

Thanks for posting I hadn't seen this. The only thing I can think of is they couldn't say he had possession until they slid into the endzone. So they stuck with the call on the field. The still shot with his knee down is a bit misleading since he was bobbling it still it seemed.

Jason Ag said:

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Thanks for posting I hadn't seen this. The only thing I can think of is they couldn't say he had possession until they slid into the endzone. So they stuck with the call on the field. The still shot with his knee down is a bit misleading since he was bobbling it still it seemed.

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It's a valid point but with the time they took to review and everything we see, they see, they still should have caught that it was incomplete.

Ball on ground with two hands not on it and not crossing the plane. If they go the bobbling route, it's an incomplete.



Again though, this is just one example out of many so far. Every week there seems to be at least one, "There is no way this game is not rigged!" calls. And not always on the Lions of course but they get their undue share of the load. That is definitely one thing that hasn't changed sadly in recent times...

lol, it doesn't surprise me that they got the call that wrong.

Nfl may be rigged, so much money involved. I'm not trying to troll, just throwing in my 2cts. Just strictly from the perspective if I was the ref. Looking at your photo and watching in slowmo, the defenders hand could have been under the ball there. Which would be enough doubt to keep the call on the field. I've noticed the NFL not wanting to overturn as many calls on the field this year.

I didn't do fantasy football last year, and pretty much stopped following Dallas. Big fan in Romo days. It was kind of nice only having the chance to be frustrated at one team per weekend.

I still think MLB replay is worse.

There was a face mask by the Texans today against the Cards that Stevie Wonder couldn't have missed

No call. Not that I minded.

Reffing/umpiring across the board, college, pro etc has just gone straight to hell

Jason Ag said:

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Nfl may be rigged, so much money involved. I'm not trying to troll, just throwing in my 2cts. Just strictly from the perspective if I was the ref. Looking at your photo and watching in slowmo, the defenders hand could have been under the ball there. Which would be enough doubt to keep the call on the field. I've noticed the NFL not wanting to overturn as many calls on the field this year.

I didn't do fantasy football last year, and pretty much stopped following Dallas. Big fan in Romo days. It was kind of nice only having the chance to be frustrated at one team per weekend.

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I'd argue that there's little to no chance it's rigged, given how much money is involved.

Fixings coming to light would cost the NFL more than any outcome could.

The NFL can put serious money behind officiating if it wants to correct the biggest issue with the game.

Nobody really minds player safety rules at the end of the day, as long as they are enforced consistently.

Make officiating a full time position with benefits, with the offseason dedicated to training.

Send refs to college spring practices around the country and have the tape reviewed.

Use virtual reality simulations to test refs. Will allow for more reps than real life games ever could, and the high sample size will give a much better gauge for performance.

The integration of expedited replay review and taking extended replay reviews to the league office were improvements, but still a ways to go.

JCA1 said:

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It is ridiculous that a multi-billion dollar industry uses part-time guys for such a critical role.

Having said that, I doubt it's that much worse than in the past. My guess is multiple camera angles, HD cameras, and endless replays account for the perception that it's worse much more than the actual officiating.

It was much tougher to argue calls when you had one grainy camera shot that was barely better than the Zapruder film.

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That's exactly why it IS worse though. We can be more forgiving if all we had was the old eyeball still. But we don't. We have the tech now. We can SEE the mistakes in slow motion at the actual game on the Jumbotrons as the refs call it wrong or unfairly. And if we can see it, they can see it.

Aside from conspiracy theories, I honestly think just straight up ego or something is keeping a lot of these calls wrong. Especially the mid tier fouls. A bang bang play happens on a handsy fight for a deep ball and a ref throws a flag for a rare OPI? Ok, human eyes and brains make that hard to track and in the moment it looks legit to the ref. Replay shows otherwise and it is absolutely clear. And we all know that flag is not going to be picked up. Why? Ego? The need to keep this aura of the refs having this inviolate power of Their Word Above All? I don't know what it is but it sucks.

It's really kind of stupidly laughable on flags getting thrown during a NFL equivalent gang fight.
Refs are going to lose control and there will be a point when cops are ready to stop player fights.
The players will kill the game before the refs do