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On Sunday, following New England’s 23-16 loss to Kansas City, Patriots fans were apopleptic about three different officiating calls that referees appear to have blown and ended up working in favor of the Chiefs.
1. A Travis Kelce fumble that was inexplicably called dead.
2. N’Keal Harry being ruled out of bounds at the three-yard line.
3. An obvious pass interference that went uncalled.
Two out of the three would have resulted in Patriots’ touchdowns.
Later, one of the officials, referee Jerome Bogar tried to explain away one of the calls – N’Keal Harry being called out of bounds instead of scoring a touchdown – but no one, including people who aren’t Patriots fans were buying it.
On Monday, as if Patriots’ fans weren’t mad enough, and as if ANYONE who watches the NFL doesn’t think the officiating has been absolutely horrendous this entire season, now comes word that they couldn’t even mark off a 10 -yard penalty against the Chiefs properly during Sunday’s game.
Football Zebras reports…
Incorrect penalty enforcements fall on the entire crew. No one may be talking about this play from midway through the third quarter, but it may be one of the biggest errors of the game. Chiefs offensive guard Laurent Duvernay-Tardif was correctly penalized for an illegal use of hands foul, but instead of marking off a 10 yard penalty, the crew only penalized Kansas City five yards. Often, referees will misspeak over the microphone and give the wrong penalty yardage, but here, the 2nd and 10 turned into a 2nd and 15, when it should have been 2nd and 20.
Any member of the crew is responsible for shutting the play down in this scenario to inform the referee of the enforcement error. Since this did not happen, all seven members of the crew will be held accountable for the improper penalty enforcement.
While that mistake by the NFL officials was not the reason New England lost the game – the Chiefs ended up punting and getting it blocked – but the mere fact that seven different officials missed this is just another example of how bad things have been this season.
Now I am no conspiracy theorist (okay, I 100 percent am), but you don’t suppose all of these terrible calls and mistakes has anything to do with the NFL taking away full-time employee status from officials and making them part-time employees again as a negotiation tactic with the NFL Referees Association back in July, do you?