The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

While watching the Divisional Round and the Conference Championships, I couldn't help but think "man, I wish all games were officiated like this!"

It's not that the refs were perfect, but I really appreciated the line the refs took. You can't throw a flag on something you didn't see and the refs did miss a few calls (as always), but on the things they did see, I just really liked how they handled it. And I really appreciated them just "letting the players play".

Is it an effect of using All Star officials? By using only the highest-graded officials at each position, you'd think the level would be higher overall.

Or are the playoffs simply officiated differently?

To me, it sure seems like the latter, although there are too few games to really tell with any certainty.

With the exception of the Wild Card Weekend, the playoffs have been remarkably low on penalties.

From nearly 12 accepted penalties a game in the regular season to 7.3 in the Divisional and Conference Championship Rounds. Wild Card Weekend was pretty much average for the season. Declined and offsetting penalties were down to an even higher degree.

Pre-snap penalties were almost exactly the same in the playoffs as the regular season. Dallas did do its best to distort things with 7 pre-snap penalties in the Wild Card Round, which means pre-snap penalties in the last two playoff rounds have been down as well. Pre-snap penalties are not really judgement penalties, so one would expect these to be the same.

The major contributor to the low number of penalties in the last two rounds of the playoffs... OFFENSIVE HOLDING. In the regular season, each game saw an average of 2.4 accepted Offensive Holding penalties. The Conference Championships ZERO (one declined). The Divisional Round had exactly 1 per game (zero declined). Watching the games, holding was clearly still happening, the refs just weren't calling it the same way as in the regular season. Again, the Wild Card Round was pretty much on par with the regular season (2.8 / game).

Offensive Holding is probably the penalty that varies the most from crew to crew with the top crews calling nearly twice as many as the bottom crews. Of the 17 crews, the 5th from the top called > 40% more offensive holding the the 5th from the bottom.

With such a disparity, it would make sense if the playoff effect were due to the officials chosen, but since we don't actually know who threw which flag (only which crew did it), there's no way to tell. It's certainly NOT down to the head refs, since many of the head refs chosen for the playoffs have been on the crews in the top (4 of the top 5).

Anyway, long story short, I really enjoyed the way the games were called and I wish the regular season could be the same way. Frankly, I'm not hearing anyone saying "man, I wish there were more holding penalties called", although I'm sure if you asked a defensive lineman, you'd get a different answer.

With regards to "NY" / Sky Official, we did get some strange situations where the crews suddenly changed their minds on what to call, but since the NFL isn't exactly transparent about this aspect, it's hard to tell. As long as the games are officiated better, I'm all for NY sticking its nose in when something's amiss.

I think it's the officiating crews. They are just better. Still make mistakes, but overall better.

They were better than the (diabolically bad) officiating of the Bengals Raiders game, I'll give them that...

However, there were missed calls that really should have been made in both games. Important ones.

Like a late hit out of bounds on a Chiefs receiver which should have automatically put them in field goal range - three plays later they had to punt. The cheap hit to the back of Stafford's helmet after the first interception. Ramsay being pulled down by the face mask during a punt return. The missed illegal procedure that should have been called on the Bengals in OT when they had nine men on the line.

That stuff just HAS to have a flag thrown.