The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

Through the first 8 playoff games this year, 600+ passing attempts. The Refs have only called offensive holding 8 times.

The refs have swallowed the whistle and are letting them play!

I really noticed this during the championship games.  Especially Pats/Ravens.  There could have been (by today's standards) at least half a dozen personal fouls called and they let em play.  Even a few scuffled and jawing back and forth was refreshing to see.  it felt like old school football (ok I might be a little dramatic there, but hopefully you get what I mean).

Wild Card weekend, both the Saints and Ravens played an entire game without committing a single penalty.

Disciplined football when the season is on the line?  Or liberal officiating?

Liberal officiating.  The refs are letting a lot of things slide in these playoffs, which I think is good.  I wonder how the Super Bowl will be officiated?

Lots of holding very little blowing.*

*make up your own joke

considering this has maybe been the most exciting playoffs start to finish (up until now) in a long long time, the NFL should tell the refs to call EVERY game like this!

^^Because if they call it like that in the regular season, it will get out of hand.  You call it tight in the regular season and then you can relax a bit in the post season and it's fair.

It's similar to how a lot of refs look at games from start to finish. A lot of refs will call it tight in the 1st thru 3rd quarters and then let them play a bit in the 4th quarter. The thought being that it's been established what you can and can't do in the first 3 quarters, now you want to let them play a bit because nobody wants to see a holding call bringing back a last second TD pass.

I have no problem if the holding call is blatantly obvious.

And that's silly. A penalty is a penalty it should be called the same whether the first snap of the game or the last. Just like this is silly. Let them play in the regular season just like you are in the postseason.

People pay good money to watch games. Not to watch refs determine how a game will be called and steer a game. And the "getting out of hand" nonsense is a joke. What's gonna get out of hand? That's a foolish statement.

It's not silly, it's human nature. We always push the envelope to see where the boundaries are. Not just in sports, but in everything we do.  By calling it a little bit tighter in the regular season you are setting the boundaries of fair play. The players will respond by trying to go just as far as they are allowed without being flagged. Sometimes they go too far, but for the most part the boundaries are set and the players have been conditioned to where the boundaries are. That way when you get to the playoffs, you can lax the boundaries a bit and have fewer calls because the players have already been conditioned what to expect. That makes for a smoother, more enjoyeable game and yet still within the rules that have been setup.

Yeah, it's a little Pavlovian, but it's a fact, not fiction and it's not silly, it's actually quite fundamentally solid and it's taught to a lot of referee's in sports.

Another common place for this to happen is how balls and strikes are called in baseball games. A good home plate umpire will call the first couple innings tight, not giving the pitcher the outside of the plate, which forces them to not try to nibble too much on the corners, but once you have conditioned the pitcher to what is and isn't a strike, then you can call it straight up how you see it and the pitcher isn't expecting calls that you aren't going to give him and the batters have to be aggressive because the black might be a strike.

Basketball referees will do this too. Early in the game, everything is a foul. Later in the game, you let them play a bit.
You can't start out that way or it will become a brawl and people will get hurt.

You're not telling me you have never noticed this before?

If it 's blatantly obvious it will be called. It just won't be called when it's close and could go either way. They let that go.

That is exactly the argument used to protest letter-of-the-rule penalties being enforced at the end of a game.  When a game is decided by a penalty, you hear nothing but whining and complaining.

And when the penalities not called, the other sided complains the ref missed it and should have called a foul. 

No matter what the refs do, the fans of the losing side are going to complain. 

Ravens are bitching that one of the score boards was slow in updating the down and distance and that is why the FG sailed wide.  Complaining is our national passtime.