Week 6 against Denver, Jim Leonhard was called for an unnecessary roughness penalty for a helmet-to-helmet tackle of Brandon Lloyd, who had just caught a 29 yard pass on the sidelines. Then, the Jets challenged the play, claiming that Lloyd did not have full control of the ball until he was out of bounds. The call was upheld following review. There were so many things the officials had wrong on that play that it was laughable:
a. Video cameras from every angle show the exact same thing: Leonhard's helmet did not touch Lloyd's helmet. The hit was 100% clean.
b. Even before the replay, it looked as though Lloyd did not maintain control of the ball in bounds.
c. Following the challenge and replay, not only did the officials fail to overturn the call (thereby acknowledging their mistake), but they also failed to mention anything about Leonhard's hit.
You know, just once I'd like to hear the referee say that the officiating team screwed up. But wait, there's more. As you know, each team gets two challenges per game, unless a team successfully challenges those two, in which case the team is awarded a third challenge. Well, losing that first challenge left Rex Ryan with only one more challenge, and that very drive by the Broncos merited the use of the remaining challenge. But you can't count on the incompetent referees to make a decent call these days, so when Demaryius Thomas caught a 17 yard touchdown by the sidelines, Ryan felt that he needed to save his challenge for later. If you were watching, the Thomas touchdown looked precisely like the Lloyd catch; it was clear that he did not control the ball until he was out of bounds.
So let's follow the sequence of events: Botched call on the penalty, botched call on the sideline catch by Lloyd, the Jets lose the challenge, botched call on the Thomas touchdown, and because of the lost challenge, the Jets couldn't challenge the touchdown. Basically, that entire drive and touchdown was engineered by the incompetence of the referees.
Fast-forward to this past Sunday. Now, it's no secret that Browns fans hate Braylon Edwards, but that does not give the officials the right to let Edwards get pummeled. On his first catch of the game, a 6-yard slant, and you'll forgive me if I can't identify both Browns players, Edwards was wrapped up by the cornerback Sheldon Brown. On the tackle, Brown went after Edwards with his helmet, resulting in an injury to Brown. That play in and of itself should have been flagged for a penalty for an illegal hit. But wait, after Brown wrapped him up, another player went to assist Brown with the tackle, and if anyone was watching, it almost looked like slow motion. The player slowed down a couple of yards away from Edwards, lowered his helmet, zeroed in on his target, blew some smoke from his nostrils, shifted into 3rd gear, girded his loins, and launched himself at Edwards helmet-first. Now, some of that is conjecture, and I wish I could find a video of the play, but you could clearly see the gentleman lower his helmet and launch himself at Edwards. Just a few weeks ago, the NFL relayed to the officials that helmet-to-helmet hits against defenseless receivers should be flagged for a personal foul, and the offending player should be ejected, suspended, and fined. Now, here we are, a few weeks later, and two players make the same illegal hit on the same receiver ON THE SAME PLAY! And not one flag. No one even said anything about it.
And finally, 1:56 left in overtime, 2nd down and 4 yards to go at the 44-yard line, Jets driving for the potential winning score, and LaDainian Tomlinson springs through the right side for a critical 8-yard gain, making it 1st and 10 at the Cleveland 36-yard line. And then... holding on Brandon Moore, 10-yard penalty, repeat 2nd down. And now it's 2nd and 14 from the Jets 46-yard line. Two plays later, on 3rd and 14, Sanchez heaves a hail-mary interception around the goal-line. CBS looked at the replay several times. Jim Nantz and Phil Simms seem puzzled. "Did you see anything?" asks Simms? No response from Nantz. Az Simms says the PC thing, "but I guess we're not down there on the field."
These are game-changing plays we are seeing. The officials are doing the exact opposite of their jobs; they are taking the results of games out of the hands of the players and into their own; they are abusing their power and shirking their responsibilities. And the calls are not evening out. The Jets are winning games IN SPITE of the horrific officiating these past four weeks. I hate to over-dramatize this, but that's the way it seems to this frustrated Jets fan.
