No-Calls: "Let the players decide the game" instead of the refs?

They call it heat of the moment but remember when that Browns player went off on a ref for accidentally hitting him with a flag in the eye? Or remember in 07 when the Rats choked against the Pats and then wound up throwing a refs flag in the stands? The ravens are some of the worst thug loving wanna be gangstas in the NFL. As a matter of fact I think they are THE worst. To push a ref should be an ejection period. Remember when Deangelo Hall just SPOKE in a bad way to one in the Skins game this year? Didn't HE get ejected just for SAYING something bad? The NFL wanted Ray Lewis to win that game and I don't care what they say.

 

Actually that holding on the safety at the end was a great idea, as there is nothing negative that could come from it. While it is a little 'bush-league' why not instruct your players to hold all they want on that play and chew up the time? The penalty is a safety, which is what you want as the outcome of the play anyway anyway. This is one case where the rules have no affect and the offense can hold all day and there is no repercussion, only benefit.

 

The play had foul written all over it had all the ingredients for pass interference + holding Jimmy wasn't even playing on the ball in his face tuggin the jersey it was catchable though momentum was broken. My 10yr old grandson called it in real time it so dam obvious the ref's and commentators were just too bias for me! Ray got what he came for enough said!

 

The irony is the refs not wanting to affect the game, did so by not making some calls. I hear people say SF wanted the refs to bail them out, didn't the refs bail Bal out by not making a call on the last play?

 

Playoff games should be officiated no differently than regular season games.

It was obvious that the SB was officiated very loosely.....it shouldn't have been.

 

Alas, here's another good one that I missed initially:

http://kissingsuzykolber.uproxx.com...my-smiths-unflagged-helmet-to-helmet-hit.html

^^ For those of you too lazy to click a link, it's a gif of Jimmy Smith nailing Crabtree helmet to helmet on the 3rd down play just before the 49ers' final play. Definitely a personal foul. The kind of stuff they throw a flag on Ryan Clark for before he even makes contact. If you're keeping score, we're now up to 50% of the "goal line stand" plays that should have resulted in half the distance to the goal and an automatic first down.

"They had other chances to win the game, blah blah blah." What the hell? How is that a valid point of view? YES, OBVIOUSLY, THE 49ERS COULD HAVE SCORED A TOUCHDOWN ON EVERY SINGLE PLAY OF THE GAME AND BEEN UP BY 100 POINTS. But they didn't. You could say that about every single game of every sport ever, so by that logic, no referee has ever affected the outcome of a game, ever. Oh well, at least SF had 4 downs from the 7 to score. They didn't on 1st. They didn't on 2nd. They got brutally robbed by referees on 3rd and 4th down who are either too incompetent to be anywhere near an NFL field (which I don't believe for a second), or they didn't want to put themselves in the spotlight and be "accused" of impacting the game (which is clear by all the other penalties they clearly saw but chose not to call, like the ref shove or holding in the end zone). And the argument here is... it's the 49ers' fault for not scoring on 1st and 2nd down?? How about if the ref's threw the flag and the Niners won the game, it's the Ravens' fault for committing penalties on defense instead of stopping the Niners within the rules? Or if you don't agree with the call, how about it's the Ravens' fault for not putting up more points earlier in the game, or not allowing a 25+ point run by the other team??

We could play that game all day. So I got an idea. How about we call the game the way it's supposed to be called?

The refs, for a very clear and specific reason, helped Baltimore win the game. And no, I'm not crying conspiracy to help the Ratbirds or Ray Lewis or whatever. But I'm saying that when you choose to not call major penalties that should have a big impact, especially repeatedly and especially at critical moments of the game (which both apply here), what you do is give a huge boost to whichever team breaks the rules more. That was Baltimore. I won't claim that SF didn't get away with a single penalty all night long, but on the game's major plays... a fumble recovery... a long bomb that would have been a completion... a crucial 2 point conversion... a play that 100% should have resulted in the ejection of a team's premier pass defender, a player who went on to have a major impact throughout the rest of the game... the 2nd to last chance one team has to win... and the last chance... on ALL of those plays, penalties should have been called on Baltimore, and thus the 49ers should have benefitted. One or two here or there you could understand as a missed call. But ALL of them, many of which were clearly conscious decisions by the referees to simply not enforce what they knew to be penalties, and you have an officiating crew that had a major impact on the outcome of the Super Bowl by way of intentional inaction, and as a result, the wrong team won. I can't say for certain that the 49ers would have won had the game been called squarely, but the odds are hugely in their favor. They probably would have been ahead near the end of the 4th quarter, but even if they weren't, they probably would have scored with a minute or so to go, and Baltimore would have had to make a final drive. Possible they win, but more likely they don't.

Thanks, refs. Way to do your job.

 

Congrats to the Rats. They won the Super Bowl. That is all that matters. How you win it does not matter. They won it. They did enough to win it. SF did not. Same as us vs. Vikings/Cowboys/Cowboys/Rams/Seahawks/Cardinals. Also just the same as the Cowboys and Packers did to us and we did not. If SF had played better they would have won. They didn't so they deserve to lose.

 

Are you saying that it's really a formula? Whoever won the game deserved to win? If it's really that simple, then are you saying that in every sport ever, the team who officially won the game also deserved to win it? That no team has ever unfairly lost?

 

Yeah. Like the Packers vs the Seahawks this year. That was TOTAL proof that a team NEVER gets screwed.

 

Hey, if the Packers had been up by 20 points at the time of the hail mary, they would have won anyway. So it IS their fault.

 

LOL. Yeah for sure.

 

There is an old saying: "If you keep getting in bed with the devil, sooner or later you have to ----." Add to this what Mark May said about the call in that Seahawks-Packers game: "If you take care of your business, you take the refs out of the equation"

Indeed, I have no sympathy for the Packers in that game. Take away the fact that they played poorly, and stick with that final play. MD Jennings had the ball right in front of him. Aside from Golden Tatte, there was no other Seahawks player around. All Jennings had to do was swat the ball, either down or out of bounds. But what does this selfish player do instead? Attempt an interception. He made a terrible football play and, as a result, put his team's fate in the hands of the officials. If Jennings plays the ball like he should have, we're not having this conversation.

If the officials are the ones deciding the outcome of these games, then why are we watching? Why bother?

 

i believe that it could have made a difference. if the holding was called, it was still a safety but it could have been enforced on the free kick. making balt. free kick from the 10 instead of the 20. the rule then , if he fair catches it, the receiving team can try a FG from that spot. who's to say they don't fair catch it at the 50 or inside the 50 and attempt a long FG? it's a seldom used rule but it is a rule.

 

Only if he shanked the punt big time. 40 yards from where he kicks it would be the equivalent of like a 28 yard punt. It's possible, and I know he had a bad one earlier in the game. But more likely he gets off at least an average punt and knocks them way out of kicking range. Still, it's 10 yards closer for SF, and there's really no way of knowing how it might have affected the return. Still probably only a 1% chance they win, but to me the point is... regardless of the impact the penalty would have had on the game, why wasn't the flag thrown? It was probably among the very most blatant holds in the history of the sport, and none of the refs even saw it or thought it was a penalty? It's just another sign that they were not willing to make calls in the game, because they somehow got it in their heads that officiating the game makes them bad officials.

 

i think the team that fair catches can get the try from that spot on the last play. you don't see it to often. a few years ago someone tried that.

from the 10 a 40yd. punt puts them at the 50. thats a 60 yarder for the win. i'll have to check the rule book on this.

 

http://search.yahoo.com/r/_ylt=A0oG...*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_catch_kick

here ya go snack. it is from the point of the fair catch. at the bottom of the page it tells about it. the defense has to lineup ten yards back. that holding call could have been huge, but he got a good kick off. GB vs lions was the last time it was used.

 

Like Dad said, Congratulations to the Ravens, they are very good....at holding

 

I know, and I remember it happening (Neil Rackers from 68, I think?).

But my point is that a punt from the 10 that goes to the 50 is 40 yards in the air, but if we were talking about a regular punt, a punt that goes 40 yards in the air is only a 28 yard punt. They line up 14 yards back from the line of scrimmage, and I subtracted two yards for the steps before he kicks it. So if he only reached the 50, that's the equivalent of kicking a 28 yard punt, and that would be considered a bad shank, probably in the bottom 2% of that guy's punts. 40 yards from the LOS might be average, but that's a ball that goes 52 yards in the air, which would be the SF 38 and a 72 yard FG. In addition, their punter is pretty good and likely to kick it longer than 52 yards in the air (40 gross, if it was a regular punt), which I believe is what he did.

Of course, the holding still should have been called and the fact that it wasn't is just proof that the refs were not interested in calling a fair game, but rather a game with a new set of very loose rules that no one was told about, for the purpose of trying to minimize controversy instead of maximizing fairness.

 

For goodness sake, man, you need to drop this ridiculous campaign. Note what Mike Pereira says about that "holding" call:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/nfl/news/20130205/super-bowl-xlvii-peter-king-mailbag/?sct=uk_wr_a2

It's a non-issue.

 

we were talking about the holding call on the safety. it was a huge issue on the free kick and subsiquent free FG attempt.

 

For goodness sake, that post of mine you just quoted comes closer to defending the Ravens than it does the 49ers. As Mac pointed out, I was referring to the "holding" that was not called in the end zone by Ed Dickson. I know you're not the only one to skim right over context, and instead look for "soundbites" that you can pick out to try and make your argument better, but I think that's definitely what happened here.

I've already clearly stated my opinions on each and every individual play. Jimmy Smith committed holding in the end zone. That play alone does not prove that the refs were not interested in calling a fair game. That play, should you isolate it, is simply a bad call. That happens sometimes, and I get it. Nobody's perfect. And yes, defensive holding is a judgment call, so this is my opinion (and usually it's everybody's opinion, when you have two fistfuls of jersey and pull one away from the body, but hey, they're entitled to change their minds for a play or a game). But when you look at all of the missed calls together, the extremely obvious conclusion is that whether or not the refs had any bias toward one team - which is not a claim I've made - is irrelevant, because they don't need to have that bias in order to help one team win. The "conspiracy," if you want to call it that, is not that they wanted the Ravens to win, but that they were so worried about themselves and the league being the center of attention on Monday morning that they let go some of the most glaring penalties I've ever seen in my life, in addition to more typical penalties that occurred at crucial turning points in the game (like 3rd and 4th down during the end-of-the-game-deciding-who-wins goal line showdown). Their feeling on the subject is that by letting penalties go, even if they are the most glaring ever, or at the most critical play of the game, they are letting the players determine the outcome. I disagree. I think that if a penalty occurs, the players have done their part and it's on the refs whether they throw the flag or not. A no-call is a dose of justice or injustice exactly the same size as a call; it's just less splashy.

Frankly, I find it ridiculous that you disagree with the notion that the refs were intentionally letting obvious penalties go to avoid attention on the world's biggest stage. I thought even those supporting Baltimore agreed with that, and that the difference was that they are okay with it. Sort of a "yes it was a penalty, but you can't call that in the Super Bowl" kind of thing. I'm just saying "yes it was a penalty, so go ahead and call it now."