What I would say on this is officiating the game is really hard. It’s really, really hard. I’ll never sit up here and say we lost a game because officiating. I just don’t believe that ever happens unless you’re the us basketball versus soviet union or something like that you can probably blame the officials. But for the most part that’s not ever going to be the case. It’s a really hard game to officiate. We’ve got a bunch of different teams in our league now, we’ve gone to 16 teams in our league, so we’ve got way more crews, so our officiating is more spread out. And we’ve got a bunch of new guys that are in our league. Do I believe it was holding? Absolutely not and it was a critical, critical play in the game. But it also is a difficult play to officiate. Now philosophically where I think we should be is we should always err on not throwing (the flag). We should not err on throwing the flag, we should err on not throwing it. That play is and we teach this along with most offensive line coaches and most NFL o-line coaches is when a defensive lineman is trying to longarm you, you chop hands to replace. That’s not the only move we teach but we do, do that. to me, if you call holding and the defensive lineman has his hands down you’re rewarding a negative play because the defense is not coaching that. In that particular play it’s really hard I see what the center judge sees, the guy goes down and Wyatt (Milum) is on top of him. But it was not a hold, he never grabbed him. He chopped his hands, and he lost momentum, he went down, and Wyatt does what he is supposed to do. Was it a hold? I don’t believe so. Do I understand maybe what was called? I do, but I don’t agree with it.
Scott Draper is the administrative person with football and he’s excellent Greg Burks runs our officiating I don’t have any problem with officiating. The greatest threat to sports period as we know it is people not wanting to officiate. I see it at the youth level, high school level and college. We need officials to officiate the game and at this level and the next level in the NFL it’s really, really hard to do. Do they get them all right? No. Do I have a problem with our communication between Scott and Greg to me? No. Do I wish some of our calls would have gone differently? Do I have issues with how the game was officiated in game one and game three? Yes. But when you lose those stick out a little bit more, too.
Scott Draper is the administrative person with football and he’s excellent Greg Burks runs our officiating I don’t have any problem with officiating. The greatest threat to sports period as we know it is people not wanting to officiate. I see it at the youth level, high school level and college. We need officials to officiate the game and at this level and the next level in the NFL it’s really, really hard to do. Do they get them all right? No. Do I have a problem with our communication between Scott and Greg to me? No. Do I wish some of our calls would have gone differently? Do I have issues with how the game was officiated in game one and game three? Yes. But when you lose those stick out a little bit more, too.
