Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has been a consistent voice of support of the job being done of the replacement officials and the debacle of a first half in Atlanta on Monday night didn’t do anything to change his mind.
During an appearance on KRLD in Dallas, Jones said that the officials are doing “well” when it comes to limiting violence in the game, which might come as a surprise to those who watched any of the games from Week Two that devolved into unchecked pushing and shoving after almost every whistle. He didn’t go overboard in his praise of their work, though, choosing to focus instead on the fact that people always complain about officiating.
“You’ve got to remember that you’ve got all kinds of complaints at any time about officiating,” Jones said, via ESPNDallas.com. “Did you happen to notice that the ones that were complaining the most, if it were from within, were the players and coaches on the losing teams? Hello. I don’t even have to look at the games or the dates on the newspaper, just hand me one from 30 years ago and it’ll be the same thing -- they’re complaining about the officiating.”
That might be the case in some years, but it wasn’t the case this weekend. Winners and losers were united in complaints about much more than just the calls that were or weren’t made on the field. The inability of the officials to maintain a semblance of order in many cases was a bigger problem as was the fact that every flag seems to come with extended discussions that make it seem like they are totally overwhelmed by the task at hand. That’s not entirely their fault, anyone would be overwhelmed by trying to do a challenging job that they weren’t ready to fill, but it’s definitely a problem that league needs to address.
It may not be the last time we hear Jones say that it isn’t a problem, though. He said that “it does appear that we’ve got a long way to go” before there’s any settlement in the labor standoff with the union.