The bigger the game, the louder the complaints about bad calls. And there were some loud complaints about bad calls from Sunday’s conference championship games.
“It’s just the way sports are, you know, it’s just another thing for us to get emotional about,” Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady said in the latest episode of his Let’s Go! podcast. “The refs got a tough job. Are they going to get every call right? I mean, is anyone a hundred percent in their job? It’s a hard job to do. They’re making decisions in a millisecond. This is what I believe . . . there were three terms they used . . . it was clear, it was obvious and . . . it was prolonged. At the end of the day that would be my barometer for throwing flags. That would be my barometer for taunting. Was it clear? Was it obvious? And was it prolonged? If it meets those criteria, penalty.”
Another reality for players and coaches is to understand the habits of the officiating crew, along with the way a given game is unfolding. In the postseason, things tend to unfold very differently.
“When you get to the playoffs a lot of times they don’t call it in the playoffs, which I think as players we really actually like that,” Brady said. “We like when they let us play. Now, can that go too far? Absolutely. If you’re thinking about rule changes in refereeing, it’s very difficult because when you slow-mo things down to the millisecond on a TV review, yeah, everyone’s going to be up in arms about everything. But when you’re monitoring those things in real time, they’re happening so quick. So I think clear, obvious, and prolonged is a great way in taunting and holding and DPI, roughing the quarterback. All those things I think would be a better barometer for throwing those flags.”
Brady also realizes that, for every team that suffers a bad call, there’s a team that benefits from a good call.
“When you’re on the wrong side of it, obviously it’s tough to swallow and there’s a lot of reasons to be, you know, angry or emotional,” Brady said. “When you’re on the right side of it you discount it. ‘No, look, we had plenty where it didn’t go our way, either.’ . . . Look, everyone wants the refs to make great calls all the time. Everyone wants me to complete every pass. It’s not the reality.
“There was a time in sports where there wasn’t instant replay all the time. You know, in tennis, there were line judges, they called things out. Sometimes they were in. And John McEnroe would scream at the umpire. That’s what he would do. And now, they have the technology they’ve used and . . . literally, I mean, to the centimeter they can determine whether balls are in or out. So, you know, as we go in sports, yeah, part of it is we can try to eliminate some of those determinations.”
No matter how much technology is used, complaints about calls and outcomes will always be baked into the fan experience.
“As long as there’s wins and losses in sport, there’s gonna be people bitching about wins and losses and who should have won and who should have lost and refs that missed calls and players that screwed up and, you know, again, that’s just part of the entertainment of sports,” Brady said. “That’ll never get old for any of us.”
But here’s what has gotten old -- the NFL’s reluctance to spend the money to try to make things better. It will never be perfect, but it can be better. And the league has the resources and the motivation to try to make it better.