The Phantom Hold and why the NFL is dying

[Estelle Getty]

1 hour ago, Mr. WEO said:

Yeah, they had punted on 8  possessions to that point....but THAT one, that was going to be the drive that brought them back!!

 

For the record, after the penalty, it was still 1st down and the Rams were on their 33 (instead of the NE 44 without penalty).  The drive was still alive and approaching midfield.  Then the Rams went: sack, incomplete, Gurley for -1 yard, punt.  3 plays and they LOST 3 more yards.

 

Pretty weak take, OP...

So the Teams should be ok with having to overcome horrible penalties that kill drives. Go back and look at the success rates on 1st and 20s compared to 1st and 10.  And tell me if you would be ok with that if it was whatever team it is you root for.  

 

Weak ceo

[davspo]

I'm not a big conspiracy guy, although it does seem that certain teams get the calls more often than not.  Regardless, the state of officiating in the NFL is a real problem.  I really don't have any suggestions on how to fix it, or if it is even fixable.  I do know that for me personally, it has impacted how often I view games.  I will watch the Bills game and that's about it.  I use to watch a lot more.  

[Mr. WEO]

52 minutes ago, Estelle Getty said:

So the Teams should be ok with having to overcome horrible penalties that kill drives. Go back and look at the success rates on 1st and 20s compared to 1st and 10.  And tell me if you would be ok with that if it was whatever team it is you root for.  

 

Weak ceo

 

 

The drive wasn't dead.  It was first down and 20 at the 33, not at their own 5 yard line...

 

3 plays....-3 yards.  And they had already punted 8 times despite 14 1st downs.  They already had 6 3-and-out drives.  It didn't matter: 1st and 10, 1st and 20....they were not going to score. 

 

It doesn't matter if you are "ok" with that----the Rams were already dead in the water. They had 2 more possessions which resulted in an INT and a missed FG. 

 

 

You're crying over nothing--one call which had no direct impact on the game.

[Sammy Watkins' Rib]

You can't over come one holding penalty in 3-3 ball game you have bigger problems. Bad calls happen all the time. This super bowl was actually one of the more fairly called games I've seen all year.

6 minutes ago, Mr. WEO said:

 

 

The drive wasn't dead.  It was first down and 20 at the 33, not at their own 5 yard line...

 

3 plays....-3 yards.  And they had already punted 8 times despite 14 1st downs.  They already had 6 3-and-out drives.  It didn't matter: 1st and 10, 1st and 20....they were not going to score. 

 

 

 

Agree 100% with everything here. 

 

 

[Gordio]

1 hour ago, BillsVet said:

 

The league wasn't hurting when Green Bay won 5 titles in the 60s, Pittsburgh 4 in the 70s, San Fran 4 in the 80s, Dallas 3 in the 90s, and the Patriots since the millennium started.  If anything, dynasties have helped advance the league's popularity given that yes, people hate those teams. 

 

This is you wanting something consistent with your opinion when it's not.  I can't stand the Patriots, but their dominance is not hurting ratings. 

 

Winning means overcoming adversity, and in most cases, not blaming things you can't control for not succeeding. This mindset that there's always a scapegoat like officiating is such a modern incarnation.  Los Angeles wasn't ready to win on Sunday and it showed.  One call wouldn't have changed that.

 

 

Couple things here.  First, 60, 70s, 80, 90s the NFL does not have the coverage or the popularity it does now.  2nd, what the Patriots have accomplished is far beyond the realm of a dynasty.  It is going on 20 years & most fans outside of the 4 or 5 states that call the Patriots the home team are sick of it.  What they have accomplished these past 20 years, it is almost beyond ludicrous.  I think fans are tired of watching it.  

 

12 minutes ago, Mr. WEO said:

 

 

The drive wasn't dead.  It was first down and 20 at the 33, not at their own 5 yard line...

 

3 plays....-3 yards.  And they had already punted 8 times despite 14 1st downs.  They already had 6 3-and-out drives.  It didn't matter: 1st and 10, 1st and 20....they were not going to score. 

 

It doesn't matter if you are "ok" with that----the Rams were already dead in the water. They had 2 more possessions which resulted in an INT and a missed FG. 

 

 

You're crying over nothing--one call which had no direct impact on the game.

 

 

Valid point but holding penalties are drive killers since they back you up 10 yards.  The refs know this.

[ProcessAccepted]

11 hours ago, Logic said:

The holding call stunk. 

HOWEVER...

Football is and always has been an imperfect game. It is subject to human error by the officials, whose jobs are much harder than they appear to us who get to watch the game from our couch in super slo-mo HD. The refs pretty much "let 'em play" all night long on Sunday, for better or worse. The play you mentioned was one exception.

The bad holding call didn't cause Goff to throw too late to a wide open Cooks, negating a touchdown. The bad holding call didn't force the Rams to come out in base defensive personnel on four straight plays against the Pats empty sets, leading to an easy Pats touchdown drive. The bad holding call didn't cause Wade Phillips to choose not to double cover Julian PEDelman on numerous critical 3rd downs. Even DIRECTLY after that holding call, on 2nd and 22, the instant replay showed that Robert Woods got WIDE open for first down yardage on a deep square in. Goff missed him and chucked it deep to the well-covered flanker instead. I could go on and on.

The bottom line is that blaming the entire outcome of the game on one bad offensive holding call -- when the Rams had NUMEROUS opportunities to win that game, needing only to score TWO touchdowns in four quarters -- is bogus. The Pats earned the win, the Rams earned the loss. 

 

I agree that the Rams had other chances and that football is an imperfect game subject to human error. But statistically you would expect these erroneous calls (or non calls) to even out over the course of a game or a season. This clearly isn't the case in the NFL. Certain teams seem to benefit from a bad call at just the right time, while others are more often the victims. I would count teams like NE and the Steelers among the teams that benefit the most while sadly our Bills often are the team coming up short. So this isn't pure anecdotal here are just a couple of examples of games deeply effected by bad calls and how some teams get them and some don't. It also important to note when they happen in games especially for the Patriots. They seem to get them when they really need them.

 

1. "Two flags in particular were pivotal against Miami. On the Dolphins' winning drive, linebacker Matt Milano was called for a 25-yard pass interference penalty. Two plays later, the Bills stuffed running back Kenyan Drake for a 4-yard loss but were penalized 15 yards after defensive tackle Jordan Phillips received a taunting penalty."

https://www.dailyherald.com/article/20181203/sports/312039831

Can't find a short video of this but so go to 1:49:20 for the bogus PI call & 1:51:25 for the taunting call.

 

 

2. #12 benefiting from a horrible roughing the passer call in the AFC Championship game. 

 

[ProcessAccepted]

14 minutes ago, Sammy Watkins' Rib said:

You can't over come one holding penalty in 3-3 ball game you have bigger problems. Bad calls happen all the time. This super bowl was actually one of the more fairly called games I've seen all year.

 

 

Agree 100% with everything here. 

 

 

 

In a really tight defensive game where both teams are struggling offensively having a big play taken away that puts you on their side of the field is a big deal. You are making excuses for a flawed system with that you should be able to overcome the refs logic. Interesting that the Patriots rarely (if ever) seem to have that happen to them.

[TigerJ]

The phantom hold was the most obvious bad call of the game.  The Rams could have done plenty to overcome one bad call, and didn't.

[Sammy Watkins' Rib]

4 minutes ago, ProcessAccepted said:

 

In a really tight defensive game where both teams are struggling offensively having a big play taken away that puts you on their side of the field is a big deal. You are making excuses for a flawed system with that you should be able to overcome the refs logic. Interesting that the Patriots rarely (if ever) seem to have that happen to them.

 

Basically in this entire game, in terms or egregious bad or non calls,  there was one bad call on the Rams and zero on the Pats? That's about as good as it gets in the NFL. You expect human refs to be better than this?? They would have to be perfect. zero/zero or 1/1 bad calls. That's not realistic. 

 

As the previous poster mentioned, Rams could have had 1st and 5 and they likely weren't moving the ball. Their offense was terrible. They missed opportunity after opportunity. 

[Mr. WEO]

25 minutes ago, Gordio said:

 

 

Couple things here.  First, 60, 70s, 80, 90s the NFL does not have the coverage or the popularity it does now.  2nd, what the Patriots have accomplished is far beyond the realm of a dynasty.  It is going on 20 years & most fans outside of the 4 or 5 states that call the Patriots the home team are sick of it.  What they have accomplished these past 20 years, it is almost beyond ludicrous.  I think fans are tired of watching it.  

 

 

 

Valid point but holding penalties are drive killers since they back you up 10 yards.  The refs know this.

 

 

Everyone knows this.  6 of the Rams previous drives were in and of themselves "drive killers".

 

They were done.  There is simply no reason to believe they would have score a TD on that particular drive.  3 times in that game they got inside the NE 35:  FG, missed FG, INT.

 

That hold call had no impact on the outcome.  Zero point zero impact...

[WideNine]

I was wrong on the decade long disparity on penalties assessed. Looked it up and although the Bills often are near the top in penalties assessed NE is usually around the middle. There are a few years where we had less, did not translate into a winning seasons for us.

 

We did not get assessed a lot of penalties in 2017 and I think that was a factor in our first sniff of the post season in a while. Last year was pretty horrible, probably more to do with all the rookies that were forced into the line-up. They need to get better, and I would like to see just less penalties called during NFL games period.

 

Apparently good teams overcome this, bad or struggling teams don't.

 

For the record one of the worst penalty differentials i saw was NE sitting at -328 yards in 2014. The only team with more was Seattle with -396. They both went on to the SB that year with the Patriots winning so go figure.

 

 

 

 

[ProcessAccepted]

16 minutes ago, Sammy Watkins' Rib said:

 

Basically in this entire game, in terms or egregious bad or non calls,  there was one bad call on the Rams and zero on the Pats? That's about as good as it gets in the NFL. You expect human refs to be better than this?? They would have to be perfect. zero/zero or 1/1 bad calls. That's not realistic. 

 

As the previous poster mentioned, Rams could have had 1st and 5 and they likely weren't moving the ball. Their offense was terrible. They missed opportunity after opportunity. 

Other sports have incorporated technology to limit the impact of bad calls. Sports like rugby and soccer utilize variants of VAR (video assisted referee) to make refs aware of missed or bad calls. It's significantly faster than the instant replay currently used in the NFL and solves these types of things. I'm did not watch the game so I can't comment on how many bad or missed calls there were but I do know that VAR would have prevented that bad holding call from standing.

[Gordio]

13 minutes ago, WideNine said:

I was wrong on the decade long disparity on penalties assessed. Looked it up and although the Bills often are near the top in penalties assessed NE is usually around the middle. There are a few years where we had less, did not translate into a winning seasons for us.

 

We did not get assessed a lot of penalties in 2017 and I think that was a factor in our first sniff of the post season in a while. Last year was pretty horrible, probably more to do with all the rookies that were forced into the line-up. They need to get better, and I would like to see just less penalties called during NFL games period.

 

Apparently good teams overcome this, bad or struggling teams don't.

 

For the record one of the worst penalty differentials i saw was NE sitting at -328 yards in 2014. The only team with more was Seattle with -396. They both went on to the SB that year with the Patriots winning so go figure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would be careful with that statistic.  it is not so much the amount of penalties called, it is when they are called.  NE does seem to get aided quite a bit with penalty flag at crucial points of the game.  

[ProcessAccepted]

10 minutes ago, WideNine said:

I was wrong on the decade long disparity on penalties assessed. Looked it up and although the Bills often are near the top in penalties assessed NE is usually around the middle. There are a few years where we had less, did not translate into a winning seasons for us.

 

We did not get assessed a lot of penalties in 2017 and I think that was a factor in our first sniff of the post season in a while. Last year was pretty horrible, probably more to do with all the rookies that were forced into the line-up. They need to get better, and I would like to see just less penalties called during NFL games period.

 

Apparently good teams overcome this, bad or struggling teams don't.

 

For the record one of the worst penalty differentials i saw was NE sitting at -328 yards in 2014. The only team with more was Seattle with -396. They both went on to the SB that year with the Patriots winning so go figure.

 

 

 

 

It's not a pure numbers game. Numbers do not provide the full context. It's when a team gets the call. I've watched many games where the Pats have drives lengthened when the game is really tight and the other side gets a few calls late in the game or at times where they are not nearly as critical. It would be cool of you could see data about each penalty on the following:

1. Down and distance

2. Score

3. Time

4. Where on field the infraction happened.

 

 

[leh-nerd skin-erd]

12 hours ago, Logic said:

The holding call stunk. 

HOWEVER...

Football is and always has been an imperfect game. It is subject to human error by the officials, whose jobs are much harder than they appear to us who get to watch the game from our couch in super slo-mo HD. The refs pretty much "let 'em play" all night long on Sunday, for better or worse. The play you mentioned was one exception.

The bad holding call didn't cause Goff to throw too late to a wide open Cooks, negating a touchdown. The bad holding call didn't force the Rams to come out in base defensive personnel on four straight plays against the Pats empty sets, leading to an easy Pats touchdown drive. The bad holding call didn't cause Wade Phillips to choose not to double cover Julian PEDelman on numerous critical 3rd downs. Even DIRECTLY after that holding call, on 2nd and 22, the instant replay showed that Robert Woods got WIDE open for first down yardage on a deep square in. Goff missed him and chucked it deep to the well-covered flanker instead. I could go on and on.

The bottom line is that blaming the entire outcome of the game on one bad offensive holding call -- when the Rams had NUMEROUS opportunities to win that game, needing only to score TWO touchdowns in four quarters -- is bogus. The Pats earned the win, the Rams earned the loss. 

I agree with you on the whole, but agree with the OP about the general content of his post.  Inconsistent officiating makes the game often unwatchable. 

 

First, the phrase "they let 'em play" is the worst thing that ever happened to the NFL. It implies a sliding scale exists on what is a penalty, what is not a penalty, what is a penalty and will not be called, and what is not a penalty but might actually be called as such. In other words, they make it up as they go along. 

 

In this case, "they let 'em play" implies they let the action go, but that didn't actually happen. They let it go, until inconceivably, with 11 minutes left in a game where points were at a premium, the official decided to throw a flag snuffing momentum and taking a first and 10 to a very low percentage 1st and 20 play.  Were left to wonder why a flag was thrown there v any other play during the course of the game. You're correct that it was not the only cause of the loss, but it was a huge part of that particular game.

 

When you line up the way the breaks went over the last couple weeks, it's fair to suggest more than a few favored NE. From the Welker muffed punt, the non-existent roughing the passer play against KC, the holding call on LA (while NE was penalized a total of 3 times in 60 minutes with holding, as they say, every play). Heck, you can argue the missed call against NRC two weeks back benefited the pats as much as it did the rams, since the true likely winner of the NFC was not in the SB if the officials made what may have been one of the most obvious calls in the history of mankind. 

 

I was enjoying the game until the holding call, weighed out the relative likelihood of that call being necessary and reasonable to call, assumed in a 3-3 game it was potentially huge, and came to the conclusion that the flag was a bad one. At that point I lost interest.  Of course I might have been drawn back in had another innocuous hold been called in subsequent series by the Pat's, if only because there was holding on subsequent series by the Pat's, but by then the officials were back to the "let 'em play" version. 

 

One last thing, I was reminded of the Falcons/NE SB, and one of the turning points. Ryan drops to pass, the receiver and dback were engaged in what looked like a ju jitsu match all the way down the sideline and the pass was incomplete. It seemed obvious someone was doing something to someone, but "let em play" was applied there and it was silly. Call the penalties consistently and you actually make the officials job quite a but easier. 

 

 

[corta765]

2 hours ago, prissythecat said:

 

 

You used to have somewhat credible posts in the past as I recall  .  Seems like you have devolved into spewing  conspiracy theories .

[CommonCents]

2 minutes ago, leh-nerd skin-erd said:

I agree with you on the whole, but agree with the OP about the general content of his post.  Inconsistent officiating makes the game often unwatchable. 

 

First, the phrase "they let 'em play" is the worst thing that ever happened to the NFL. It implies a sliding scale exists on what is a penalty, what is not a penalty, what is a penalty and will not be called, and what is not a penalty but might actually be called as such. In other words, they make it up as they go along. 

 

In this case, "they let 'em play" implies they let the action go, but that didn't actually happen. They let it go, until inconceivably, with 11 minutes left in a game where points were at a premium, the official decided to throw a flag snuffing momentum and taking a first and 10 to a very low percentage 1st and 20 play.  Were left to wonder why a flag was thrown there v any other play during the course of the game. You're correct that it was not the only cause of the loss, but it was a huge part of that particular game.

 

When you line up the way the breaks went over the last couple weeks, it's fair to suggest more than a few favored NE. From the Welker muffed punt, the non-existent roughing the passer play against KC, the holding call on LA (while NE was penalized a total of 3 times in 60 minutes with holding, as they say, every play). Heck, you can argue the missed call against NRC two weeks back benefited the pats as much as it did the rams, since the true likely winner of the NFC was not in the SB if the officials made what may have been one of the most obvious calls in the history of mankind. 

 

I was enjoying the game until the holding call, weighed out the relative likelihood of that call being necessary and reasonable to call, assumed in a 3-3 game it was potentially huge, and came to the conclusion that the flag was a bad one. At that point I lost interest.  Of course I might have been drawn back in had another innocuous hold been called in subsequent series by the Pat's, if only because there was holding on subsequent series by the Pat's, but by then the officials were back to the "let 'em play" version. 

 

One last thing, I was reminded of the Falcons/NE SB, and one of the turning points. Ryan drops to pass, the receiver and dback were engaged in what looked like a ju jitsu match all the way down the sideline and the pass was incomplete. It seemed obvious someone was doing something to someone, but "let em play" was applied there and it was silly. Call the penalties consistently and you actually make the officials job quite a but easier. 

 

 

Excellent.

[corta765]

5 hours ago, RalphWilson'sNewWar said:

2001 - 4-12

2002 - 9-7

2003 - 6-10

2004 - 10-6

2005 - 6-10

2006 - 8-8

2007- 8-8

2008 - 8-8

2009 - 7-9

2010 - 5-11

2011 - 6-10

2012 - 7-9

2013 - 7-9

2014 - 9-7

2015 - 9-7

2016 - 7-9

2017 - 10-6

2018 - 7-9

 

What your seeing is the Bills Record had they SPLIT with New England every season.  Which I feel is something most divisional rivals should be able to accomplish.

 

what this shows me is that even by Buffalo being able to beat New England...they were rarely still ever a good enough team on their own to really matter in any serious conversation in the NFL.

 

Its not New England or The Refs or Bad Luck...it’s Buffalo as a Franchise being inept for nearly all the 21st Century.

 

 

 

This may be the best post to really show Buffalo's mediocrity that I've ever seen on TBD.

[Da webster guy]

12 hours ago, Bangarang said:

The OP sounds old and bitter.

 

 

I know right?    

 

He's gonna die before the NFL does, I guarantee you that.

[Fan in San Diego]

The Rams should have covered Edelman better. How was that guy open that much?