I used to be a huge football fan, watched all the time for years, but I quit following sports for a while due to some changes in my life. The last football game I watched before this one was the Pats/Giants Superbowl in 2012.
I noticed a Bills/Texans playoff game was on when I had some down time on Saturday, so I figured I'd see what NFL football looks like these days. Turns out it looks so rigged, I had to search and see if anyone was talking about this game. I am surprised it isn't a bigger deal; I couldn't believe how fixed this game looked.
They spent like 45 minutes waxing poetic about J.J. Watt's pecs and then spent the rest of the game making sure every call in every clutch situation went the Texans' way. Amongst other things, I saw delays of game not get called, that crap illegal block call at the end, and of course the most blatant screw up I had ever seen in my 25+ years playing and watching football - the non-call of that safety on the kick return. I was surprised it was called a TD and expected it to be reviewed and changed to a safety (I actually feel like I have seen almost this exact situation in a game back in the 90s), but to pretend like it was somehow a touchback is 100% ridiculous.
Someone said this earlier in the thread and I couldn't disagree more. There is no such thing as the 'spirit' of a rule, there are just rules. Some of them have gray areas, but the intent is always to minimize these unclear situations so everyone knows what game they are playing. Once you start making stuff up as you go along, why should I even watch? It is not interesting to me to find out who showed up and won a game that neither team knew they were going to be playing - if that was an NFL football game, then that was a safety. Houston does not get a free pass because one of their players could not be arsed to even read and remember the rules of the game that he is paid truckloads of money to try and maximize his performance in. That's on them for hiring an idiot to return kicks.
Either the NFL is switching to Calvinball rules, or the fix is in, and neither of those things is acceptable in fair competition. This game was a joke and I will almost certainly never bother trying to watch an NFL game again.
