Flags thrown by replacements, regular refs are about the same

NEW YORK (AP) — The num­bers say there isn’t much dif­fer­ence in the NFL with replace­ment offi­cials. Com­ments from play­ers and coaches say otherwise.

As fan out­rage grows over calls and non-calls, delays in dol­ing out penal­ties and inde­ci­sion by the replace­ments, sta­tis­tics show strong sim­i­lar­i­ties between the num­ber of flags thrown this year by the tem­po­rary crews and last year by the guys who cur­rently are locked out.

The NFL knows things are far from per­fect — some­thing that could have been pre­dicted with offi­cials whose recent expe­ri­ence typ­i­cally was not even at the high­est col­lege levels.

But things are never per­fect with the reg­u­lars, either, and the league shows no sign of being forced back to the nego­ti­at­ing table because of the criticism.

“We are going to con­tinue to do every­thing pos­si­ble to raise the level of per­for­mance of the cur­rent offi­cials” through train­ing tapes, con­fer­ence calls and meet­ings, NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said Wednesday.

The league does that with the reg­u­lar offi­cials, too.

One point of empha­sis this week will be game con­trol and mak­ing sure play­ers are penal­ized for unnec­es­sary actions rang­ing from rough­ness penal­ties to unsports­man­like conduct.

Game con­trol and sim­ple pro­fes­sion­al­ism by the offi­cials have become key issues this week after com­plaints from a num­ber of players.

“There’s no doubt the integrity of the game has been com­pro­mised not hav­ing the reg­u­lar offi­cials out there,” Giants line­backer Math­ias Kiwanuka said. “We’ve got to get that taken care of.”

Added Rams coach Jeff Fisher: “We just all hope, and I’m speak­ing on behalf of all 31 other head coaches, we hope they get some­thing done. We’re trust­ing that they will.”

The Eagles’ LeSean McCoy was stunned when one of the replace­ments told the All-Pro run­ning back he was on the official’s fan­tasy foot­ball team. The league pro­hibits its game offi­cials from play­ing fan­tasy football.

“I’ll be hon­est,” McCoy said, “they are like fans.”

What the fans seem most annoyed with is the lack of pace to games, most notably Mon­day night’s win by the Fal­cons over the Bron­cos that dragged on past mid­night. That’s about the only area where, sta­tis­ti­cally, the replace­ments have been far inferior.

Aver­age time of game is about six min­utes longer in 2012 than in 2011, and with only one over­time game in the open­ing two weeks — same as last year — extra peri­ods can’t be blamed. More likely, the time it takes to prop­erly admin­is­trate penal­ties through­out the game is the cause.

The league has a super­vi­sor in the press box and an alter­nate offi­cial on the side­line to help in that area. But it’s been a struggle.

Posted by Jon Kleinknecht on Sep 21 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.