PHOENIX — Perhaps NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is a huge Kevin Bacon fan.
Because he sure channeled Bacon’s Chip Diller from the 1978 classic “Animal House” when asked about what most saw as another less-than-stellar year of NFL officiating.
Goodell didn’t actually wave his hands and yell “All is well!” during the 45-minute Q&A days ahead of Super Bowl 57, but he might as well have.
“I think for us, when you look at officiating, I don’t think it’s ever been better in the league,” Goodell said Wednesday, a claim that elicited a tidal wave of pushback among consumers and observers of his product.
Roger Goodell Defends NFL Officiating
Late in the news conference, Yahoo! Sports’ Charles Robinson asked Goodell about the performance of NFL officials in 2022 and Aaron Rodgers’ theory that games have been negatively impacted by TV networks poaching some of the most experienced and trusted refs in particular.
Robinson also asked Goodell about the report that the decision to award the Chiefs an extra down in the AFC Championship Game due to a clock issue came from the league office.
Here is Goodell’s answer in full:
“I would disagree with several of the points you’re making in there. Yes, we listen to all the voices. Let’s just start with that point. But we like to go to the facts, ultimately. Just to take your point, are we losing people from the field to the booth? There are some that never even officiated on the NFL field. And so we didn’t lose anyone. We may have lost them from our office, but we didn’t lose them from officiating on the field. Others are taking on that responsibility at the end of their careers. I do not think that’s a factor, at all. Zero.
“I think for us, when you look at officiating, I don’t think it’s ever been better in the league. There are over 42,000 plays in a season. Multiple infractions could occur on any play. Take that out or extrapolate that. That’s hundreds of [thousands] if not millions of potential fouls. Our officials do an extraordinary job of getting those. Are there mistakes in the context of that? Yes, they are not perfect and officiating never will [be].
“But we also have replay and other aspects that let us address those issues to make sure they are not something that we can’t correct on the field. Communications between our office, that is not the case in the championship game. That was stopped appropriately because the clock was running by an official on the field. That happens frequently in our game. That’s not an unusual thing to have that happen.
“Again, we want to go back and look at the facts. We may not agree with every TV announcer or every officiating expert, but we think our officials are doing a great job. But we’re always going to look through our competition committee and everything else we have, how we improve our officiating. But it will never be perfect.
“In addition, I think we all have to realize, through the quality of what we see in our broadcasts, you’ve never been able to see the kinds of things that can you see today. You see it in super-slo-mo. You see it where you can actually stop it. Sometimes that distorts a call, potentially, but the reality is our officials are held to an incredibly high standard, and I think they meet it. Will we try to get better? You betcha.”
Reaction to Roger Goodell
The NFL has a crisis of confidence when it comes to their officiating. After that AFC Championship Game that Goodell referenced, #NFLRigged was trending on Twitter — and not just because of the extra down granted the Chiefs.
The officials mangled at about a half-dozen other calls, including multiple late in regulation that could have potentially changed the game’s outcome. But that was the most recent example of a pattern of bungled moments.
A bunch of roughing-the-passer calls were awful, play clock expiration calls have no consistency, and pass interference remains a subjective mystery. And it isn’t just media and fans alarmed by the level of officiating.
Titans coach Mike Vrabel in October put the NFL on blast with a reply-all email that went to NFL’s officiating department and every coach and general manager in the league. Vrabel’s email, according to ESPN, read as follows:
“I appreciate the time and energy that goes into these videos, but I suggest we devote every minute of our officiating departments’ time ensuring our officiating crews are as well trained in the clarifications we worked to create in the off season and that each crew is as consistent as possible. Thank you.”
It’ll be interesting to see if the NFL is more responsive to internal concerns than it was on Wednesday to external criticism. Because as you might remember, things didn’t turn out great for Chip Diller and his Omega brothers.