Six football games in 48 - hours! Whew! The games start to blend together. Here are some officiating observations and notes from this weekend. 1. Two alternates The last time an alternate came in to work was in 2007, due to an injury. This week we had two alternates start the game --
Tag: offensive pass interference
Week 9 officiating video: no pass interference on punt formations, legal contact, and penalty enforcements
50 Super Bowl calls, Part 4: XX to XI
5 observations from conference championship weekend
It was a great weekend of football, and the conference championship officiating crews did well by their respective games. 1. Umpire Bill Schuster had the game of his life Number 129 was everywhere Sunday night. Â He jumped in between potential combatants, dug to the bottom of fumble scrums, hustled to get the
1975: No OPI on Hail Mary pass, official knocked out cold by flying bottle
Dec. 28, 1975 NFC Divisional Playoff: Cowboys at Vikings Thirty-five years ago, "Hail Mary" became a football term after Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach so described the desperation pass that connected with Drew Pearson in a playoff game with the Vikings. In the final drive, the Vikings were convinced that the touchdown should never
Week 12 open forum, assignments
Leavy says he’s haunted by Super Bowl XL calls
With an unbelievable amount of candor, referee Bill Leavy admitted that he made game-changing mistakes when he officiated Super Bowl XL in February 2006—mistakes that helped propel the Steelers over the Seahawks. It was immediately branded as one of the worst called Super Bowls in history. The Seattle Times ran a
49ers have ‘several paragraphs’ of questionable calls headed to league office
Week 13: 49ers at Seahawks As NFL head coaches are wont to do on a weekly basis, 49ers coach Mike Singletary has registered a complaint with the league office regarding some questionable calls in Sunday's game against the Seahawks. First, Singletary does acknowledge that important caveat at the end of his
Week 3 “Official Review”: Taunting, OPI, pleas for PylonCam
As done in previous weeks, there is a two-part "Official Review," one for NFL Network and one for NFL.com. The topics were not nearly controversial this week for the league's vice president of officiating, Mike Pereira: 49ers defensive back Shawntae Spencer signaled incomplete on a pass that he broke up in