The NFL’s Tainted Super Bowl—A Look at this Weekend’s Big Game
This year’s Super Bowl pits the New England Patriots against the L.A. Rams, but a suspicious and pungent odor has been lingering around this matchup for the past eight days.
Eight days ago, both teams advanced to the Super Bowl by winning their conference championship games. Both teams also benefited from some unusually generous officiating at crucial moments in those games.
First, there was the shoulder tap on Tom Brady. Brady went back to pass and a defensive lineman from Kansas City swung his hand at the ball, missed, and hit Brady on the shoulder pad. Brady got rid of the ball safely and stayed upright on the play, as he was otherwise untouched.
The result of the play? A fifteen yard penalty for roughing the passer! That call certainly took the term “roughing” to its comical extreme.
That wasn’t a game-deciding play, but it definitely helped the Patriots.
Next, we had Julian Edelman’s muffed punt. The ball, rolling along the ground, appeared to bounce off of Edelman’s fingertips. A player from Kansas City raced after the ball, scooped it up, and ran it in for an easy touchdown.
But after video review—the points came off the board and New England got the ball back. Why? Had the video shown conclusive evidence that the officials had made the wrong call on the field?
Over and over, we watched the close-up view of Edelman’s hands. Had the ball hit his fingertips? It was impossible to tell, as the close-up view, even in slow motion, was both very jumpy and heavily-pixellated. Nevertheless, the officials decided that the call should be overturned. No fumble and no touchdown.
When the video lacks conclusive evidence to overturn a call, the rule is to always stay with the original call on the field. The officials ignored their own rule on that one.
Some people will tell you that the muffed punt call didn’t ultimately matter, as Kansas City intercepted the ball soon after that, and their offense scored a touchdown a few plays later. That’s all well and good, but the point I am making is that the officiating decidedly benefited New England over Kansas City.
The big pro-Patriots calls, though, pale in comparison to the call heard round the NFL world, the call that gave the L.A. Rams new life in the final minutes against New Orleans.
A little under two minutes remained in the fourth quarter. Tie game. New Orleans was driving and had the ball inside the L.A. 20 yard line. All they had to do was convert on third down, run a couple of plays straight up the middle to run the clock down, and kick the game winning field goal as time expired. Or, if they missed the chip shot, it would go to overtime.
On third down, Drew Brees rolled right and had his man open on the sideline, close to the first down marker. Here came the Rams defender. He hit the receiver helmet-to-helmet and flattened him while the ball was still in the air. The receiver lay sprawled-out on the sideline, and all we were waiting for at that point was the penalty flag to come in. It was an obvious penalty. After the game, even the defender admitted he was expecting a flag.
The flag didn’t come in. I thought there was perhaps a delay because there were two obvious fouls on the play. Perhaps the officials were deciding which penalty to call, or if they should call both. One was the helmet-to-helmet hit on a defenseless player, which should have been 15 yards and an ejection from the game. The other penalty was pass interference.
Time passed. No flag came in. The officials weren’t conferencing. It was fourth down, the clock was stopped, and the Saints brought in the field goal kicker. They made the kick to go up three points, but the Rams had plenty of time left to drive downfield for the tying kick. The game went to overtime, and the Rams kicker made a miraculous 57-yarder to win it. The Saints were done.
The officials who were involved admitted after the game that they blew the call. The New Orleans coach and Saints fans everywhere are still waiting for someone from the NFL to explain what happened. The Saints owner is asking what the NFL is going to do to ensure that no team is ever placed in that situation again, i.e. losing a trip to the Super Bowl because of an obviously incorrect call. Protest billboards are going up in Atlanta, the site of this year’s Super Bowl. The Saints claim, correctly, that they were robbed.
The whole thing reeks of a rigged Super Bowl. I don’t know for a fact that it was rigged, I certainly don’t think we’ll ever see evidence proving that it was rigged, but for many football fans across the nation, the appearance is that this matchup was rigged.
How does this particular matchup benefit the NFL? Why would commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL powers-that-be prefer to see New England versus L.A., as opposed to Kansas City versus New Orleans?
Let’s put the Super Bowl on hold for a moment and travel back in time to the spring of 2002. It was the NBA Western Conference Finals, and we had the star-studded L.A. Lakers playing against the decidedly non-star-studded Sacramento Kings.
The Lakers played in a big TV market and held national appeal. They featured a Hall of Fame coach in Phil Jackson and two superstars in their prime-- Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant.
The Kings were small-market. They featured one quasi-star in Chris Webber, but to this day he remains more famous for his college career than for his pro career. Their other guys were NBA journeymen such as Vlade Divac, Peja Stojakovich, Mike Bibby, Hedo Turkoglu, and the cult hero Bobby Jackson. Their coach was the rumpled Rick Adelman.
The Kings were the better regular season team that year. They were the #1 seed in the West and the Lakers were the #3 seed. The Lakers played bully ball with Shaq and Kobe to win games, while the Kings played a true team game with lots of crisp passing and player movement. The Lakers dunked a lot and the Kings barely dunked at all.
The Kings began the series playing inspired basketball and eventually went up 3-2. Things were looking up for the Kings.
But everything changed in Game 6. Vlade Divac, guarding Shaq, racked up six fouls and was out of the game. His backup, Scot Pollard, also racked up six fouls and took a seat. Shaq shot 17 free throws, making 13, but even more importantly, the Kings had no more big guys to guard Shaq as he went on to dominate with 41 points.
Kobe Bryant also benefited from a bunch of ticky-tack, sometimes absolutely phantom foul calls and made 11 of 11 from the line on his way to 31 points. Derek Fisher scored 11, but no one else on the Lakers broke single digits in scoring. It was all Shaq and Kobe in Game 6.
Meanwhile, the Kings had six players score in double figures, but no Kings player shot more than Mike Bibby’s eight free throws.
More than simply looking at the numbers, though, if you watched that game you could see that something had happened with the officiating. Who knows what exactly was going on— we still don’t really know what went on other than that there were a whole bunch of bad calls— but something definitely happened with the officiating in Game 6. And the Kings were shell-shocked.
The Lakers went up to Sacramento and closed it out in Game 7, with Divac once again fouling out of the game.
So what’s the point? What’s the connection between the 2002 NBA Western Conference Finals and the 2019 NFC and AFC Championship Games? Bad officiating? Yes, bad officiating, but also the suspicious and pungent odor of a rigged event. 2002 isn’t known by most basketball fans as the year the Lakers won the title. 2002 is known as the year the Kings were robbed. And, I believe, 2019 will long be remembered as the year the Saints were robbed.
The bad NFL officiating eight days ago just so happened to benefit the big-market, star-studded teams. The Rams just recently moved from St. Louis to L.A., from a mid-level market to the nation’s second largest market for sports. Their team has improved vastly in the past two years under wunderkind coach Sean McVay. And now they are attracting Lebron James and a lot of the Hollywood crowd to their games.
Compare that to New Orleans—small market, an old quarterback who’s not named Tom Brady, no other stars to speak of. It’s easy to see which team the NFL would prefer to have in the Super Bowl.
The latest news has it that four of the officials who worked the Rams/Saints game have ties to Southern California. Even one Southern California ref on that crew would have constituted a breach of normal protocol for officials. But four?
What’s more, an ESPN story pointed out that those were the four refs who happened to be closest to the big missed call. On that fateful play, all four of them had responsibilities in that area of the field. All four could have thrown a flag, but none of them did.
Am I saying that those refs are crooked? No. Am I saying that Roger Goodell instructed them to throw the game? Not at all. What I am saying is that the league office, by assigning those officials to the game, tilted the odds just enough in favor of the Rams to increase their chances of a desired outcome.
It’s kind of like how Tom Brady was deflating the footballs pregame before he got caught and suspended a few years ago. The flat footballs weren’t making him win the games, per se, but flat footballs were easier for him to keep his grip, and flat footballs don’t get fumbled as often. They’re easier to catch. It was a nice little advantage for a player to have, who is the primary ball handler in a game where even one lost fumble can cost you the game. And where an extra completion here and there can be the difference in the game, as well.
Just like in the NBA in 2002, something happened with the officiating this year in the NFC and AFC championships. Officiating helped put the star-studded, big market teams in the Super Bowl. We know the NFL went outside of normal protocol by allowing those Southern California-based officials to work that game. They missed a big call. And now the Super Bowl is tainted as a result.
My observations and predictions for the game:
1. Because Kansas City isn’t in it, at least we’re spared from having to hear all the chatter about, “Can Andy Reid win the big one?” When the Kansas City coach does finally win a Super Bowl, and I think he will one day, it will be a huge relief to be spared from hearing that talking point discussed over and over again. Just as it was a relief when the Cavs, Cubs, Peyton Manning, John Elway, and Michael Jordan all won their first titles (or first title in over a century, in the case of the Cubs).
Yes, even MJ was once that guy—fodder for endless speculation about, “Of course he’s a great player, but we’re not sure he can lead a team to a championship.” Mercifully, one title is all it takes for the commentators to drop that tedious line of conversation. Andy Reid should be able to lay it to rest one day, before the speculation moves on to someone else.
2. I predict Tom Brady will not go on any designed QB runs or naked bootlegs.
3. I predict Jared Goff will have some major jitters on the big stage.
4. I predict the Rams will have to rely on their run game.
5. I predict the Rams pass defense will give up big play after big play, as they have all year.
6. I predict that the Patriots’ dynamic backfield, which is better than they’ve had in years, will take advantage of a Rams defense that is scrambling to stop the pass.
7. I predict that the Patriots will avenge last year’s Super Bowl loss to Philly.
8. I predict that we will see the first Super Bowl blowout since Seattle beat Denver 43 to 8 in 2014. That will make only the second Super Bowl blowout in the last twelve years, which is remarkable. Back in the 80’s, it was a blowout almost every year. The best of the blowouts, of course, was Super Bowl XX. Look it up.
My official prediction is Patriots 44, Rams 17. Thanks for reading and enjoy the (tainted) game!
