I doubt the Chiefs were going to intentionally not score on the JuJu pass. The play was designed for a throw into the end zone. After the penalty and time to think about it, then they knew to intentionally not score.
Pretty easy for Bradberry to come off as professional and not a sore loser by saying “I didn’t think it was a penalty but I can’t allow them a chance to make that call” or something similar, rather than “It was holding, I tugged his jersey”. I’m not sure why a defender saying he committed a penalty can’t be used as evidence that he might have committed a penalty. That seems silly to me.
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I had folks saying Andy should’ve gone for 2 to make it a 9-point margin and scrolled back to see if that was discussed here. I wonder what the analytics say to do there - you never see coaches try to make it 9.
One thing I did say at the time, though, is that I don’t think it’s the freeroll you make it out to be. As the 4Q was unfolding, I thought there was a decent chance that Sirianni goes for 2 and the win if they were down 7 and scored a TD with very little time left.
No issue with that. But it still was a bad call and it just adds to the multiple breaks KC got in the semis and finals
Like when eagles catch a pass. Run to the line to run the play. They hike the ball
The refs literally blow the whistle for no reason. It wasn’t a penalty. Something about a sideline something meow chow.
When the entirety of football fandom is complaining that great game was tarnished. That’s what happened
No one is saying the chiefs didn’t deserve to win. They had a magical second half. But the refs clinched it for them
Who knows what hurts can do with 90 seconds and two timeouts down 3
It was because the Eagles didn’t give the Chiefs time to substitute. It’s a rule.
I think trying to go up 9 is extreme FPS, going up 8 still gives you two ways to win (keep them out of the end zone to begin with, or keep them out of it on the ensuing 2PC if they do score). Even with the rugby scrum thing, it’s not like any team has figured out a way to convert at rates above the traditional ~50%.
Not to mention going up 9 does the whole “forcing the other team to play optimally” thing where they know they need two possessions so they play up tempo the whole time, etc. Being up 8 gives them the opportunity to make a mistake by playing to score with almost no time left, meaning OT at worst and sometimes just losing outright when they don’t convert for 2.
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https://twitter.com/BenStandig/status/1625156247887527941
Maybe this will help Bienenmy finally get that head coaching job.
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You think the refs may have been looking for Bradbury’s cheating after missing his last yank allowed the Eagles to turn almost an entire quarter of the Super Bowl into boring rugby ball?
The obvious problem with your example that even a two year old would notice is that the refs didn’t overturn the Eagles questionable catch after review, so result of this alleged bias was costing the Chiefs a timeout and challenge.
The only obvious blown call the entire game was Bradberry doing almost the exact same thing to JuJu in another high leverage spot.
Whoa no way. Do you have other examples of stuff like this done to give advantage?
NFL players get fined for uppity dances, no way most of them are going to give away $25,000 or whatever saying a call was wrong.
It’s not binary. There are a million things he can say to avoid being fined if he thought the wrong call was made. Maybe, just maybe, Occam’s Razor says he thought he held.
"In every NFL game, there are penalties that go uncalled. There was a natural argument in some spaces that the league and its officials should have “let the players play” in such a key moment late in a Super Bowl. Nobody tunes in for the referees, so they should have swallowed their whistles with the game on the line. Right?
Well, think about what the other implications of that philosophy would be. “Letting the players play” sounds great if they’re not committing penalties, but if players know they can get away with holding or pass interference or any other judgment call in key situations, they’re going to take advantage of those rules and create a whole other conflict.
Nobody said the refs were right to let the players play when the Rams committed a clear pass interference on defense against the Saints during the 2018 playoffs without being flagged. That’s an extreme example, but players are smart enough to adapt what they’re doing for the game situation and the referees involved. Treating those situations with the game on the line as different from ones earlier in the contest only means you’ll get lots of replays with uncalled holds and contact, which won’t be met with praise."
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Calling games well is hard enough as it is, let alone trying to consciously recognize the leverage of the situation and decide what level of contact warrants a penalty. I’ve been an official. My main focus is only ever on the play in front of me. Most of the time I have no real idea which team is which, what the score is, the down and distance (unless that’s my specific job), etc. I’m focused on the things in front of me. How many players on the field. Is everyone lined up right. Was the motion legal. OK now the snap, where are the players going. Where’s the contact. When reaching for the flag the idea that I would be considering which team I’m throwing it against or how this flag may impact the game seems like a reach. I may not even know which way the play is going because I’m not looking at the QB or the ball, because that’s not my job on this play. I saw a penalty that may have happened in the blink of an eye, I’m calling it. About the only time we ever started to let some thing go was in extreme blowouts. We want to let the kids play, but at the same time the game is effectively over, we’re going to let the non-egregious ones go.
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A player who makes a catch may advance the ball. A forward pass is complete (by the offense) or intercepted (by the defense) in the field of play, at the sideline, or in the end zone if a player, who is inbounds:
a. secures control of the ball in his hands or arms prior to the ball touching the ground; and
b. touches the ground inbounds with both feet or with any part of his body other than his hands; and
c. after (a) and (b) have been fulfilled, performs any act common to the game (e.g., tuck the ball away, extend it forward, take an additional step, turn upfield , or avoid or ward off an opponent), or he maintains control of the ball long enough to do so.
Not sure where Pereira was getting that there’s some time component to this, or that the player needed to make a step. Seemed like he turned upfield to me. But it was bang bang. I don’t think anyone would have flipped out if the call stood.
That was a gigantic play obviously. Like 1/20th of a second later and it would probably have stood. Same as the Goedert catch that Reid challenged - just milliseconds from not a catch. Eagles were running really good on that stuff.
Pereira btw is the guy who wouldn’t back down on twitter from the idea that the play could be whistled dead with the ref waving his arms, and then 5 seconds later the punt returner backs up into the end zone, and it’s still somehow a live ball. Dude is not all there.
Are there tiers of refs that make it to the upper levels who have the cognition to track and organize the identities attached to each variable?
I don’t mean that as a subtle maybe you just suck. I just never thought about it but it seems refs probably are evaluated in some way as objectively better than others and they’d pick them for upper tier games.
Is this like way off? (my dad refused to explain sports to me)
From the same article:
“It’s true this had been a relatively hands-off game, with the only other judgment call on the books before the fourth quarter having been an offensive pass interference call on Eagles wideout Zach Pascal. In this particular instance, though, the most obvious missed call in pass coverage before the Bradberry play had been … a play in which Bradberry grabbed Smith-Schuster’s arm on third-and-8 in the second quarter and no flag was thrown.”
It’s probably not that they were just letting it go, but that they didn’t see the first one because multiple receivers were in the area so the ref might not have been looking at the receiver being held. In that last play, Juju was the only receiver in the area so a hold would have been much easier to spot.
There’s a selection process for sure. But football officials are very segmented. At the NFL level I believe there’s 7 of them, and they each have a very specific set of tasks for each play. I don’t think multitasking is a good feature here. I’d think you’d want guys very tuned in to what their role is and able to tune out shit that doesn’t matter.
I don’t have much of an overall point. Just that I tend to cringe a bit when people talk about the official should know the situation when throwing the flag. But like JimHammer’s post said, you don’t really want them considering the situation because a blown no call like the Rams PI can have just as much impact on the game as a bad flag. A penalty is a penalty. Consistency is key, and the football is really tough because as the saying goes, there’s holding on every play, so officials have to consider that. An NFL ref should obviously be a million times more accurate and consistent than I was. But I can still see them making the mistake.
I think it was a bad call only because with the advantage of slow motion replay we can see that a lot of the receivers jerky motion on the play was due more to his own poor route running than it was from contact by the defender. I’m actually surprised we weren’t seeing more penalties like this in the game as guys were slipping on the field left and right, and when the slipping coincides with contact, it’s significantly more likely to draw a flag than contact alone.
I’ve watched the play multiple times and I’m honestly not sure where the flag was thrown. There were 3 points of contact that all could’ve done it. During his initial cut to the outside the defender puts his hands on him, and the receiver is slow and awkward to come out the break, so I can see how that might look like the result of a hold but didn’t actually see a grab. Then as he cuts up field he seems slow to accelerate vertically as the receiver has his hands on him. I don’t see a hold, but can see how an official might think this is the result of one. Then as he takes his first step up field the defender has a hand on him and JuJu seems a step slow. I have no idea which action the ref threw the flag against. None of them warrant it, but it was such an awkward sloppy route with a defender on him the whole way.
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https://twitter.com/Matty_KCSN/status/1625190035745038336
https://twitter.com/MecoleHardman4/status/1624960025197449217
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The referees get scored and evaluated throughout the season and the scores are used to decide who refs playoff games. I don’t know the exact process, but a lot of it happens by folks at the NFL head offices who review game film each week.
There are some other factors too, (for example, you have to have been an NFL ref for a certain number of years before you can get assigned to the Superbowl and there are restrictions on doing back to back Superbowls), but the scores are definitely a big piece.
Also, during the regular season the officials generally work as crews. So, if you and I were a crew, we would work as a unit for every game during the regular season. During the playoffs, however, the roles are assigned more individually, so we wouldn’t necessarily be assigned to the same games. Some people argue that this hurts playoff reffing because, even if the individuals are better, they might not have developed some of the communication and teamwork skills that come with working together over the course of a season
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