NFL Open Thread: No cookin’ like home cookin’ edition
By 
Last night’s otherwise excellent game was marred by an officiating fuckup that was egregious even by NFL standards:
after additional expert testimony, the verdict is in
in a non-shocking turn of events…
surprising no one…
the ref is incompetent pic.twitter.com/SHuBW55fON— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) December 31, 2023
let’s walk thru the play
the Lions were lined up LEGALLY & PERFECTLY
no penalty at all
except the ref made a mistake
this is great by @Realrclark25 pic.twitter.com/9GUCVUhQ4A— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) December 31, 2023
ESPN just showed another angle. Jared Goff literally sends Taylor Decker and tells him to report as eligible. I mean…. Wow. https://t.co/5rJoI0AcJT pic.twitter.com/vuyQCmnJkY— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) December 31, 2023
The TL; DR is that 1)Dan Campbell explained the 2 point conversion play he was planning on calling; 2)the lineman who caught the pass reported as eligible; 3)the ref identified a player who did not report as eligible as being the eligible receiver instead; and 4)penalized the Lions for his own mistake.
Oh, and then he testilied about it:
Absolutely hilarious bit from Brad Allen: "it was so weird! 70 reported as eligible, but lined up in the position of an ineligible players. And 68 didn't report, but lined up as an eligible receiver. Crazy! So weird that the Lions would do that. Anyway…"https://t.co/rcWJdiapug— Benjamin Solak (@BenjaminSolak) December 31, 2023
In fairness, I would assume that the typical cop can tell more plausible-sounding lies than this.
And it’s even worse for the NFL than this — Brad Allen’s crew was for some reason working a national prime time game with major playoff seeding implications despite already having presided over the two worst-officiated games of the year, including this beauty:
"That's gotta be a foul. That's gotta be a foul!"- Cris Collinsworth
"This is a foul… This is defensive pass interference."- Terry McAulay #SNF pic.twitter.com/WvsAIU7JXT— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) December 4, 2023
Maybe Goodell will bring him back for the first Cowboys playoff game, like Dick Bavetta.