The officiating in the NFL this year has caught plenty of flak from fans and media and now a prominent head coach can no longer bite his tongue any longer.
New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton ripped the officiating in an interview on “The Dan Patrick Show” Thursday morning after his team was subject to a controversial roughing the passer call in a loss to the Titans last week.
“I hate getting to the point where you expect it and you’re numb,” Payton said. “Those kind of things can’t happen. I look at that more from an overall leadership perspective and training perspective. Those problems start at the top, not the individual crews. Somehow, we got to reduce the variables.”
Payton has been coy about the controversial call all week, which negated a Saints interception in the end zone, offering a “no comment” in his postgame presser and telling WWL “well, the foul is called ‘roughing’” without offering much more criticism earlier in the week.
But it was not just the call against his team that has Payton frustrated, it’s something that’s been a problem across the league, with the NFL admitted to some bad calls that essentially robbed the Bears of a win against the Steelers on Monday Night Football last week.
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“We just, in a lot of ways we see it happen each week with the officiating,” Payton said. “That’s the hardest thing to get past, when they’re not up to speed maybe. It happened to the Bears a week-and-a-half ago.”
The head coach, who was formerly on the competition committee, was also asked about one of the more controversial rules of this season, taunting, and broke course from many of the other head coaches who have defended the new rule.
“I think it’s being over-officiated,” he said. “I don’t think any of us who discussed it [on the competition committee] saw it going where it is now.”
So what’s the solution to fix all this?
Payton advocated that officials become full-time employees and work at a centralized location during the week.
The bottom line: in order for the NFL to be the best product the officiating needs to improve.
Added Payton: “Everyone watching and participating and involved in it deserves better.”
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