Side judge Greg Meyer moved to the umpire position, leaving two deep officials.

Photo credit: Life magazine/Bob Levey/Getty Images: DeFelice after breaking up a fight in a November 2010 game.

Zebra Blog has learned that referee Scott Green has been on leave the past two weeks with an injury. Gene Steratore substituted for Green in Week 11 and Jeff Triplette will head Green’s crew today. A league source has indicated that Green has an unspecified injury, with no word on when he will return.

Photo credit: Life magazine from Week 8 game between Jaguars and Texans.

What many perceived as a fumble recovery by the Raiders, sealing the fate of the Patriots, was overturned by a replay review. The fumble by Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was now a harmless incomplete pass; the Patriots had new life to tie the score and then win in overtime.

The Tuck Rule gave Brady an advantage, because as he reconsidered throwing a pass, he had not yet tucked the ball back to his body, and thus, was by the letter of the rule, still engaging in a forward pass.

At the time, director of officiating Mike Pereira — whose title was later elevated to vice-president of officiating — defended the rule because it gave objective criteria to referees to determine when a quarterback, who withdraws from a pass attempt during a throwing motion, becomes a runner again. Tucking the ball back towards the body is an objective criteria, but the rulebook (Rule 3, Section 21, Article 2) considers the end of the tucking motion, and not the start of, as the conclusion of the throwing motion:

Note 2: When [an offensive] player is holding the ball to pass it forward, any intentional forward movement of his hand starts a forward pass, even if the player loses possession of the ball as he is attempting to tuck it back toward his body.

Fast forward to this past weekend, when the Tuck Rule again reversed a fumble recovery for the defense. The Ravens dominated the game, so the missed opportunity was inconsequential to the result.

Pereira now works as a rules analyst for Fox Sports, and he has reconsidered his position on the Tuck Rule:

This was clearly a correct reversal, but is it time to look at this rule because Cassel was not attempting to pass the ball when it came loose.

I think it’s time to change this rule. A pass should only be ruled incomplete if the ball comes loose in the actual act of passing the ball. If it comes loose in the tucking motion, then it should be a fumble.

I would support a rule change, although it took me a long time to get to this point. I’m sure it’s no consolation to the many Raiders fans around the country.

Pereira is not just any opinion, however. Even though he no longer holds a position with the league, the NFL’s Competition Committee will likely take note of Pereira’s shift and suggest a change to the rule. Pereira’s influence has seemed to increase as a now-independent auditor of the league’s officiating.

And, maybe people will stop bothering referee Walt Coleman about the correct call he made on that day.

Pereira also summarized other calls made during the wild card games, which you can compare to our analysis (part 1 | part 2).

During the season, every official is graded on every single play for the calls that they made. An incorrect call or a missed call is calculated in an overall average score of accuracy. Last year, a segment of “Official Review” on NFL.com showed the process of evaluating a single play, which involved shuttling the tape 25 times for generic incompletion (video, beginning  at 2:10, and our coverage).

Separately, each official and the crews as a whole are evaluated in other areas, such as the pace of the game, placing an emphasis on getting the right call without game-delaying conferences. Also, officials are graded on written tests of mock plays.

The officiating department will then take all the evaluations to determine their playoff assignments under the following guidelines:

• The top eight crews, or half of the officiating staff, will be assigned a game in the wild card or divisional playoff rounds.
• Any officials who are in their rookie year with the league will be replaced with an official from another crew. Similarly, a head referee cannot officiate in his first year after promotion to the crew chief, but he is eligible to be an alternate for the playoffs.
• The top three officials at each position will officiate the conference championship games and the Super Bowl. However, an official must have been selected to a playoff game in a previous season and have five seasons’ experience to qualify. In addition, for the Super Bowl he must have also officated a conference championship game.
• Apparently, the league avoids assigning an official to consecutive Super Bowls.

Update 1/5: A league source told us that the playoff assignments will be announced on Thursday.

Periera retired last year as the vice-president of officiating, in which his weekly chores included an “Official Review” segment on the NFL Network. It was the first time someone from the league office made himself available on a weekly basis to discuss the calls on the field. Even though it was filtered through the league-owned cable network, he still used the platform to engage in controversial calls and critiques of the officials.

Pereira’s retirement was partially motivated by his desire to live near his elderly parents in California, and the league office is in New York. Fox Sports seized the opportunity to hire Pereira, as they are, unlike their competition, located in Los Angeles.

The incorporation of Pereira into the broadcast is nothing short of genius. Serving as a rules-interpretation jukebox, he will pop in to a broadcast to relieve the game commentators from embarrassingly wrong analysis of the NFL rulebook. So far, he was correct on 49 of 50 replay challenges this season, or right on the league average of 98 percent. (In this case, “correct” means matching the call made on the field.)

Pereira has even made himself available during the Thanksgiving Day game and the regionally telecast Giants–Vikings game that was moved to Monday due to stadium damage.

The part that we miss, however, is the non-Fox games, obviously. It becomes painfully obvious when a former jock shows his complete lack of knowledge of the sport he once played. (Isolated example, video of Matt Millen’s complete lack of understanding of how the end-zone pylon indicates in-bounds and out-of-bounds.)

We appreciate Pereira’s analysis, but he is now hamstrung by league rules from showing game footage outside of the “broadcast window” to explain the calls beyond Fox game broadcasts or on the Internet. Even with that limitation, his analysis has been the obvious, slap-to-the-forehead answer to decades worth of bad rules interpretation from the booth.

Jeff Triplette was the crew chief.

However, as pointed out at Pro Football Talk, there is something more sinister afoot. While the video shows Alosi tripping Carroll on a sideline punt-coverage route, Alosi is flanked by five other Jets staff members. Keeping in mind that punt coverage players tend to go out of bounds frequently (either on their own or aided by the opponent), this obstruction has all of the hallmarks of being deliberatly disruptive to the game.

Of course, the excuse of the coaching staff is that they are in the designated bench area of the sidelines, and that no one is standing on the off-limits, six-foot-wide white boundary line. However, a player who is headed out of bounds can step around a single person who is standing in the mandatory bench location. When five yards of sideline are being “covered,” there is little that a player can do to avoid a collision or entanglement.

On the field, it is illegal to create a wedge when blocking on a kick return. This is defined as at least three players forming a “wall” to block the full-speed defenders headed towards the ball carrier. The Competition Committee found this to be dangerous, and the NFL outlawed the formation (by making it a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty) in 2009. What happened on the Jets sideline, while not a true wedge, created up a situation where collision was inevitable.

So, yes, the team staff was where they were allowed to be, however their actions show that they had an alleged inclination for tampering with the integrity of the game.

Updated 12/14. A previous version of this post stated that the NFL suspended and fined Alosi, when it was the team’s action in consultation with the league office.

It was a routine punt, but at the conclusion of the play, Dolphins cornerback and special-teamer Nolan Carroll was prone on the turf. Jets assistant coach Sal Alosi admitted to what everyone could see from the broadcast camera (video). While running down the sideline, Alosi slyly and cowardly extended his knee into Carroll’s path.

While the back judge Rich Reels marked the sideline with his hat (a signal that Carroll went out of bounds and cannot be the first to touch the ball), he did not throw a penalty for sideline interference. Because it is so rare for a member of the sideline to blatantly obstruct the play, it is not something an official is watching for, especially since it was done so surreptitiously.

Alosi released his confession through the team Sunday night:

I made a mistake that showed a total lapse in judgment. My conduct was inexcusable and unsportsmanlike and does not reflect what this organization stands for.   I spoke to [Dolphins coach Tony] Sparano and Nolan Carroll to apologize before they took off. I have also apologized to [Jets owner Woody Johnson, general manager Mike Tannebaum, and coach Rex Ryan]. I accept responsibility for my actions as well as any punishment that follows.

That punishment is likely to be swift. In the last two instances of game-related non-player discipline, the league had a judgement before Monday Night Football, when fines are generally late-workweek business. In Week 4, Titans coordinator Chuck Cecil was fined $40,000 for giving, what the broadcast crew termed, a “Hawaiian peace sign.” Last season, Titans owner Bud Adams was fined a quarter-million for a similar gesture, which was also levied on Monday afternoon.

These past indescretions were for bad conduct, but otherwise had no impact on the game. What Alosi did was interfere with the game, which potentially could have affected the outcome. Had Carroll been badly injured, this could have had a significant impact on the game, the season, and even Carroll’s career. It is in light of this, that we are speculating that the NFL will take this action today:

• Fine Alosi $75,000, or some figure that is no more than 25% of his salary.
• Revoke his sideline privledges for the remainder of this season and the 2011 season, which essentially renders him unemployable on a pro sideline (and likely any sideline at any level). I suppose he could be suspended by the league, but at the very least he can be banned from the field.
• Fine the Jets organization $250,000 for employee conduct that tampered with the game.

Perhaps some dimly lit gym in Brooklyn will soon have a trainer who has the boring stories of his glory days, when he trained some of the best in the National Football League, and he threw it all away during a moment of carelessness and stupidity.

The Giants–Vikings game has been rescheduled to Monday at 7:20 p.m. (EST) and will now be played at Ford Field in Detroit. Jeff Triplette’s crew will be officiating.

Rarely do any fistfights in football inflict damage on the combatants. However, Titans cornerback Cortland Finnegan and Texans receiver Andre Johnson found a way around that and had one of the most violent fights in the NFL in the color television era.

Undoubtedly the NFL will not provide the video link to it on their site, the only officially sanctioned source for video clips. We will post a link if we find one (or alert us to one in the comments). (Update: I owe the NFL a big apology. Here is the video.)

Both players yanked off each other’s helmets as they pummeled each other in an old-fashioned hockey-style fight. The officials, armed with just whistles and yellow flags, had little to do to break up the fight.

Finnegan is already on notice by the league; in Week 4 that he was notified that he faces possible suspension for any future on-field acts. The level of the battle is likely to have both players suspended anyway, so Finnegan might have an extremely rare multiple-game suspension for an on-field incident. Finnegan and Johnson were ejected from the game after the fourth-quarter incident.

Clete Blakeman was the referee and side judge Greg Meyer is shown giving Johnson the ejection signal immediately after the fight breaks.

The Titans and Texans met in Week 2 of 2009 with an ejection and fines being levied for fighting during that game.