The NFL doesn’t look too kindly on players and coaches publicly lambasting its officials. The league fined Steelers coach Mike Tomlin $25,000 earlier this month for his criticism of officials after his team’s victory over Atlanta.
Browns defensive end Myles Garrett avoided a fine for his postgame criticism of Brad Allen’s crew after Cleveland’s loss to the Chargers Oct. 14. Perhaps that’s because the NFL fired down judge Hugo Cruz, who missed the false start that angered Garrett.
Garrett, though, received a lecture from defensive coordinator Gregg Williams.
“I talk about it daily: I do not want to hear their excuses,’’ Williams said Friday, via Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “I don’t make the excuse. I don’t want them to make the excuse. Everybody’s going to make a mistake. We have to play. We have to do our part. That particular play [when the false start was not called], that has been talked about all along. I’m hot at how we handled the play, not how the referee handled the play.
“We have to finish the rush. We stopped rushing. We stopped finishing the coverage. You have to finish the coverage. We have had over a hundred snaps like that. We had one of them in practice today. You guys were not out there, but I snapped on them today. We had a false start by one of our offensive linemen and our guy stopped in the rush. You do not stop in the rush. You keep going.’’
Browns coach Hue Jackson said he urges players to keep their frustration and anger with officials within the locker room.
“We can’t make our focus about [the officiating],’’ Jackson said. “We have to let other people handle that because we’re not going to reverse calls. We do not get all of the bad calls back, and they change the score. It doesn’t work that way. Let’s voice our frustrations behind closed doors, deal with it but let’s move on because the key to any victory for us is going to be how we play.”
Garrett said after the Chargers game that Russell Okung’s false start “was so obvious [that] I don’t understand how you don’t see it.” The NFL apparently didn’t understand either.