September 25, 2012

Replacement Refs Turn Hail Mary Pass Into an OMG Moment

By GREG BISHOP

Seattle

The play that best defines this N.F.L. season occurred at the end of another game in which replacement officials looked less like actual referees and more like the Keystone Kops. It was bizarre enough to almost defy description.

In summary: the player who caught the winning score clearly pushed off to do so. He did not appear to really catch anything. One referee signaled a touchdown for the hometown Seahawks. Another signaled an interception for Green Bay.

Amid the bedlam that ensued, the teams retreated to their respective locker rooms. The game was over. Until it wasn’t. Both teams came back onto the field. The Seahawks kicked an extra point, extending their winning margin to 14-12. Celebration No. 2 commenced with some Seahawks half-dressed, all Packers incensed, and most football fans wondering why they ever complained about the officiating before this season.

It was, in a word, absurd. But in this N.F.L. season it was not atypical. It was Monday.

“This is comical to me,” Jon Gruden said on the ESPN broadcast.

He added: “That’s two of the worst calls at the end of a football game that I can remember.”

The Seahawks trailed with eight seconds remaining, fourth-and-10, ball on the 24-yard-line. Their quarterback, Russell Wilson, lofted a pass to the end zone where five Green Bay defenders outnumber two potential targets. Their receiver, Golden Tate, shoved one defender, Sam Shields, out of the way.

Another defender, M. D. Jennings, leapt from behind Tate. The ball appeared to land in Jennings’s hands. Tate’s hands were there, too, as Jennings fell to the ground and pulled the ball to his chest. Tate eventually wrestled the ball away.

The replacements stood there, with this dog pile in front of them, looked at each other, looked at Tate and almost sheepishly raised their hands. The side judge, Lance Easley, now the most popular Easley here since Kenny roamed the Seahawks’ secondary, thrust both arms skyward: touchdown. The back judge, Derrick Rhone-Dunn waved his arms: a touchback, or game over — it remained unclear.

The referee, Wayne Elliott, later said that if both players possess the ball, the tie goes to the offense. Which is true. If both players possess the ball. Tate insisted later that he did indeed possess it. The Packers, predictably but also justifiably, claimed later that he did not.

Yet even Coach Pete Carroll later said of the labor impasse between the N.F.L. and its regular officials, “It’s time for it to be over.”

Carroll’s team, it should be noted, won the game. And while he did not publicly disagree with the call, he agreed with seemingly every other coach, player and pundit across the league in that the replacement officials should be replaced as soon as possible, whatever it takes, however it happens, with the real ones.

On the field afterward, Warren Moon, the Hall of Fame quarterback turned broadcaster, could only shake his head. He, too, had witnessed a game in which the teams combined for 26 points and the officials whistled 24 penalties, for 245 yards, or more than the 238 yards managed by the Seahawks.

“This could be the game that gets a deal done,” he said. “Something like this, on the league’s biggest stage, on Monday night, it’s just not good for the game. You could argue the officials had a hand in the outcome, that they cost Green Bay the game or would have cost the Seahawks.”

Seattle, it should also be noted, endured its share of botched and questionable calls Monday night. The Seahawks racked up as many penalties as points.

But it was the late calls, on the final play especially, that will be remembered. They marred an otherwise magical finish for the home team, football’s equivalent of a game-winning home run, and struck at the very integrity of the sport.

Twitter bubbled over as Monday night bled into Tuesday morning. Several Packers posted expletive-laced rants. Offensive guard T. J. Lang suggested the league fine him and use the money to pay the regular referees and later wrote that “any player/coach in Seattle that really thinks they won that game has zero integrity as a man and should be embarrassed.” Receiver Greg Jennings implored Tate to take a lie-detector test.

The Packers were not alone. Reggie Bush, the Miami running back, posted on Twitter that the “refs single-handedly blew this one.” Drew Brees, the New Orleans quarterback, wrote that “this is NOT the league we’re supposed to represent.” Even Jimmy Connors, the tennis legend, posted that while he loved the N.F.L. he would never bet on the sport again.

“The N.F.L. is a business, and it makes business decisions, but they never should have let this get into the season,” Moon said. “Those guys are in a difficult situation. The N.F.L. thought it could get away with replacement referees. And it’s backfiring on them.”

If the winning touchdown was a close call — and few outside Seattle argued that — there were other egregious errors Monday night. As when the Packers’ attempted a 2-point conversion in the fourth quarter and officials handed them a kicking ball.

Or when the officials failed to have the Seahawks kick the mandatory extra point after time expired. Receiver Sidney Rice said he left the locker room without shoes, in only his pants and an undershirt, to return for the game’s final play. Long snapper Clint Gresham said it was the least pressure he ever felt on a snap, along with the “longest victory celebration I’ve ever been a part of.”

Rice also benefited from a questionable fourth-quarter pass interference call, the kind that has come to define this chaotic, uneven N.F.L. season. “Yeah, it was pass interference,” Rice said. “The ref called it!”

So it went. The focus afterward lingered not on the Hail Mary pass, not on the Seahawks’ defense and its eight first-half sacks, not on a young roster filled with talent. The focus lingered, instead, again, on the officiating, on the last people the league wants underneath the spotlight.

That should be the most compelling case to resolve the labor dispute immediately. An on-field product that can no longer be trusted.