Replacement Refs vs The Actual Game

It was nice to see that the NFL didn't have a lockout this season, well the players at least. There is now the lockout of the officials, which for all of us who have bashed them in the past (I've been on that train a lot) this season has been much worse than recent years, and we've only had two weeks. Mike Tirico of ESPN's Monday Night Football compared the officials to a substitute teacher and the players were doing things they wouldn't normally do with regular officials because they could get away with it. I couldn't agree more with him. Some of these officials seem like guys who have been pulled out of the crowd or as I saw someone say on Twitter last night "I'm pretty sure I saw that guy at Footlocker today". Which also seems like a reasonable assumption. Last nights game between the Falcons and Broncos took 3 hours and 27 minutes, 30 minutes longer than a regular overtime length game. Atlanta held on for the 27-21 win. The story of the game shouldn't have been the officials and how awful they were but how good the Falcons looked offensively and defensive against a Broncos team that had beaten a pretty decent Steelers team the previous week (Pittsburgh beat the Jets 27-10 this week). Denver had four turnovers in the 1st quarter, Peyton Manning throwing 3 interceptions and Knoshon Moreno fumbled, Manning wasn't putting the blame on anyone but himself after the game which he normally does; "I've just got to take care of the ball better". Matt Ryan on the other hand had a good all-around game going 24/36 for 219 yards and 2 touchdowns. His favorite target was Roddy White who had 102 of those 219 yards and one touchdown. 

Those are side stories compared to officiating which like I said before was awful. There were flags thrown then pick up and not even mentioned why they were thrown in the first place, there were officials shoved, players getting into scuffles (which happened in the Eagles-Ravens game), missed calls, and the amount of time it took them to actually give the call was absolutely ridiculous. The best part might have been when the officials would call the Falcons "Red" instead of Atlanta. 

It's most likely going to be a week to week process for these guys, let's just hope it doesn't take them to the Super Bowl to figure things out. I give them some credit because they were just kind of thrown into this situation but still, these officials are slowing the game down and making it very hard to watch sometimes. It'll be interesting to see how things go in the next few weeks because if things keep going like they are, the regular officials will have leverage in making a deal and will hopefully get back on the field soon. We need you Ed Hochuli!