The Saints are correctly very upset about the non-call on the pass interference, which probably cost them the NFC Championship Game against the Rams, and a trip to the Super Bowl. Sean Payton, Drew Brees, and others are vocal about this. Where were Payton and Brees after the 2009 NFC Championship Game, when there were so many bad calls against the Vikings, the league came out with a video pointing some of them out? These were game-changing calls, and the league did not even address the two bad calls in overtime that gave the Saints the victory. So, if they want to talk about being robbed this year, be honest and consistent and say they didn’t deserve their previous Super Bowl victory. That game featured numerous terrible, game-changing calls, not just one as with today’s game.
Officiating continues to be a major issue. When will the league decide to add another referee in the booth, who calls the refs on the field and tells them when a call is wrong and what the correct call is? Everyone watching the game on TV knows it’s a bad call, as does the ref in the booth, so why shouldn’t the refs make the right call? All this means is the league adds one more ref for each game, and in the booth. That ref can call down to the field and let the field referees know the correct call.
Overtime continues to be very unfair, and the league continues to do nothing about it. Defenses are very tired at the end of games, which might give an advantage to the team getting the ball first, since if they score a TD, as the Patriots did today, the other team never gets the ball. The fair way to do this is to let both teams possess the ball an equal amount of times, and play until one team is ahead after equal possessions. That might be one possession, or it might be more than one, but it’s only fair that teams get equal chances. Why let a coin flip decide the game, and this holds true even if the team possessing the ball first doesn’t win the game on their first drive, as they might still win the game on a subsequent possession, meaning they had one more opportunity than their opponent.