Breaking down the excellent officiating and invisibility superpower seen from the week 10 matchup between the Denver Broncos and the Kansas City Chiefs
In the Denver Broncos 16-14 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, there were 9 accepted penalties and no challenges. These numbers show low official involvement, a clear strategic choice that had both merit and drawbacks.
When to call a minor foul
The rules of football exist to accomplish three task – make the game safe, fun, and fair. Minor fouls, enforced as five yard penalties with no loss of down or automatic first down, pretty much exist only for the sense of fun or fairness. If the context does not provide an unfair advantage, its quite tricky when officials will call these penalties. Calling them is to enforce how the game “looks” for fun, but penalties are intrinsically not fun. These situations can be really complicated, and I have discussed this previously. What I have not discussed is what happens when a team, or player, constantly violates these minor rules. It is very tricky. I worked a game recently that saw Team A have first and goal at the 6, attempt six plays, and then line up for first and goal from the 41 after five illegal formations and one hold. The hold was obviously going to be called, but calling illegal formation five plays in a row is tricky. At some point you want to actually play football, and even if the team is getting advantages from not following the rules (as was this case), the best interests of the game counsel us against repeated penalties unless its absolutely egregious.
This was the situation that the officials had to deal with for Chiefs right tackle Jawaan Taylor. This was particularly true for down judge Sarah Thomas in the second quarter. Simply put, Taylor does not consistently line up in formation unless its third and short or on the goal line. He was called for this once. Honestly, he could have been called ten times. In addition to this, the cognitive load of Taylors penalties seemed to help him get away with false starts (two uncalled in my judgment) and holds (also two uncalled – including a hilarious one where he very obviously held John Franklin Myers, and Myers still managed to sack Mahomes). I do not hold the formation no-calls against Thomas, or against line judge Walter Flowers for other quarters. These situations absolutely suck for officials, and most of the time if you call the same illegal formation penalty like that repeatedly, you will be downgraded. But it definitely infuriates to see the Chiefs constantly benefit from atrocious play from Taylor.
Utilizing Official Judgment
There was a play in the first quarter that exemplified how tricky it can be to officiate football. Zach Allen tackled Samaje Perine near the sideline after a brief catch and run. Immediately after the play, Allen open-handedly slaps Perine in the helmet/facemask, without particular force. From the reaction of the players and officials, this seemed like encouraging conduct between two former teammates. But it is very easy to see the exact same action in the exact same context meant to be a taunt, or possibly just unnecessary roughness. Early in a division rivalry game makes this even more challenging to judge, because officials should be zealous to keep the game from getting emotionally out of control. I cannot judge Allen’s intent, or hear what he said, but I almost certainly would have flagged him (this was a failed third down and KC punted – so a foul would have given them a first down). Judging by KC not being angry over it, Walter Flowers made the better call, but wow did Allen get lucky.
Official Evaluation
I charted four questionable calls in this game, one benefiting Denver, and three benefiting Kansas City. Excluding plays that involved Taylor, I did not note any bad calls (though I certainly would have questions about the Brandon Jones penalty if it was a call I reviewed). The spotting of the ball was excellent, a bit short at times, but never by a yard or more and it was very consistent. All in all, this was an extremely well officiated game. The officials had a very good no-targeting call on Kareem Hunt, where Hunt clearly loses his defenseless status by lowering his head into an oncoming tackle after catching a ball. There were no plays potentially worth challenging and no challenges in the game. I tend to really respect Brad Allen and his crew and this game was a great primer as to why that is the case.
Except that Taylor did exist, even if the officials mostly ignored him. I honestly do not get how he so consistently has done this over the years, but he manages to get away with just constant false starts, holds, and illegal formations.
Mailbag
with the recent increase of association of gambling in sports, including NFL, are we going to have to flush out a few officials that were bent by the newer temptations? Is there evidence in the all patterns that can be seen by someone with more knowledge than me?
This was a great question, and I will answer it several ways. First, I trust the integrity of officials to an absurdly high amount. Any good official I would trust to fairly officiate in situations where they are hopelessly conflicted. I trust officials to be fair in games where they have family working for one team, or in countless other situations where we often ask people to recuse themselves due to conflict of interest. The point of an official is to be a neutral advocate of the game, and the notion that someone is an official and will not be neutral is a huge betrayal of what we do. I would hope there are none of these people officiating at any level in any sport. So I do not believe that gambling introduces significantly new pressures on officials, because while the intensity may be higher, neutrality is already at the core of what we aught to value.
Second, it is absurdly hard to officiate badly. A core component of officiating well is to develop so much muscle memory that it is almost impossible to not do it properly (for example: short wings need whistles in their mouths at the snap to blow false starts, but you do not want your whistle in your mouth during plays, so it is very common to spend years watching football at home with a whistle so that you load it on the ready for play and drop it when the ball is snapped). We do this with almost everything we can from football, so at least for myself, I do not think I could “cheat” without it taking a very long and awkward time (which I suspect would be very noticeable).
Third, officials get graded on their performance, and the standards are extremely high. Any attempt to cheat would have to be subtle enough, or common to the game enough to avoid negative grading, or else the relevant official would lose their job for poor performance.
Fourth, I honestly do not know what kind of things an official could do that would impact gambling. Because I work in football, I have never learned anything about sports betting. I know there are numbers next to games, but I have no clue what those mean or how they translate to the game. So I have no clue if anything I will say below is relevant.
But with all that said, here are a few areas where officials have enormous discretion. 1) was a runners forward progress stopped in bounds (game clock runs) or not before he stepped out of bounds (game clock stops). 2) Spotting forward progress on sacks 3) deciding if a pitch was forward or backwards 4) yard line of airborne punts out of bounds 5) spotting the ball after long plays 6) how much we explain the rules implications to the teams 7) how long we take administrative time outs 8) how long we force the offense to allow defensive substitutions after offensive substitutions. 9) the extent to which we correct errors on the game clock (we do not really have discretion at the very end of periods, but otherwise no one besides us looks at it)
I have no clue how any of the above could be manipulated because I do not understand sports betting. But these are all areas where we have a lot of discretion and good officials will make different interpretations, so the game could be seen very differently from different crews. I have never seen a “fixed” game, but I have seen many games with bad officiating.
Feel free to ask questions in the comments or to send me an email. While I rarely make unsolicited comments on non-Broncos games, if you have any rules questions from other games I am happy to either reply in the comments or if the matter is of enough concern in next weeks column.