NFL Officiating is continuing to take heat in 2019 as fans, players and coaches are increasingly frustrated with penalties called, not called, replays and general confusion.
Just last week, former NFL Official Bernie Kukar told Mike Max that the leagues is "confusing officials" and they don't know what to call, or not call anymore. He added that since he retired from officiating, the league has taken "common sense out of the game".
Now, the former VP of NFL Officials and current rules analyst for FOX Sports, Dean Blandino is chiming in. He talked to WCCO's Henry Lake Tuesday night about the current state of officiating.
Lake asked him if it feels like there is greater scrutiny on officials this year.
"You know, it feels greater than it's ever been. And I think that it's a combination of things," said Blandino. "I think when you look at social media and just everyone has access to to some platform and there's always been attention on officiating, but again as this year adding pass interference as a reviewable category, there was an emphasis on offensive holding and then you've had some high profile primetime games with some controversial calls and you put all that stuff together and you get a lot of conversation about officiating. So it does feel like that. It's not unusual to have people talking about officiating and talking negatively about officiating, but it does feel like the scrutiny continues to get greater and greater every year."
One of 2019's most controversial decisions is to allow replay challenges of pass interference. Said Blandino, "I think with where the league is now is they've basically said it's going to have to be something very, very obvious in order to overturn the call on the field. And I think that's not a bad thing. It should be obvious. We obviously all saw that the play in the championship game last year, that really was the driver to getting this rule passed. I don't think it's going to be as impactful as people thought it might be just because they're not going to overturn the call on the field unless it's just blatantly obvious that it's wrong."
Lake also asked Blandino if he ever thought there would be a time when a coach could challenge any call on the field.