Re: The NFL Thread
Dude are you seriously going to blame the officiating for having lost? You know idiots around here would pull the same crap if that Tucker FG doinked. It was that close.
Games rarely come down to a single play at the VERY end of the game. Then a blown call is the worst and is put under a magnifying glass. But even then, there are so many things that dictate a game that officiating can never really be blamed for the outcome of a game. It dictates some things, but please...
If Tucker missed, some of the ire at the officiating would've been shifted onto Baltimore failing to get a kicker, but at least he makes them in clutch situations, unlike Billy Cundiff.
Gary, I'm not blaming the officiating for us losing, I'm saying that the refs did at times take the game out of the players' hands, that's all. In big moments, the Ravens stepped up and made some nice plays, which is why they won. However, the officiating did prevent us from seeing who the actually better team on the day was. :P Last year, when we lost to the Steelers in Pittsburgh, they were the legitimately better team. Actually, in last year's AFC Championship game, I think that the Ravens were the better team. Can you honestly say that one team was really better? In a game this marred by officiating, I don't think the fans of whichever team lost would be exactly happy. If we had lost to the Ravens in a fair game, such as there was in last year's AFC Championship game, I wouldn't have said a word.
I thought the Pats made some mistakes down the stretch with the run game, whereas the Ravens passed, although the Ravens had to pass, and it paid off.
You could say that the Dolphins losing to the Jets today came down to each of three poor plays by the Dolphins. If Carpenter hadn't missed the first FG, the later FG at the end of regulation would've won it there. Carpenter then missed another FG which would've won it in OT, and then the head coach idiotically calls a time out and gives the Jets a second chance after having blocked Folk's first attempt.
It is true that the vast, vast majority of games don't come down to a single play, but there are games where winning and losing is that simple, such as a fairly even game and one team has a chance to put it away with a first down and can't get that decisive play, and then goes on to lose. There are still other plays involved, but the shift in momentum is big.
---------- Post added at 01:19 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:04 AM ----------
This isn't NFL related, but do you remember the play where Michael Jordan fouls Bryon Russell and the Bulls lose a game in the NBA Finals? No, the fact is that people don't. What they remember is that Jordan nailed a buzzer beating three to beat the Jazz. Any neutral party there can see that Jordan fouls Russell and thus the three shouldn't have counted, but that's neither here nor there. When refereeing gets in the way, there are problems.
In football/soccer, corrupt/questionable refereeing vastly changes games. Let's say a ref unfairly awards a penalty and that leads to a team unfairly getting an advantage in a match. While refs aren't actually corrupt in European football, at least not most of the time, it is a more or less well known fact that home teams usually get more than the benefit of the doubt from the referee, sometimes even legitimate corruption. I've seen more than a few matches where a seemingly stonewall penalty wasn't awarded, yet later on, the opposing club gets a rather soft penalty.
We just need the regular refs back and then there wouldn't be any of these issues. When the regular refs are here, if they miss a call, we accept it, but it's not going to be the focal point of the game unless it's so incredibly egregious that it's unacceptable. The problem here is that the story of this game isn't that the Ravens beat the Pats, it's the terrible officiating. Is a interested fan going to be upset when his team loses in a game like this? Of course. Fortunately for both teams involved, this wasn't a playoff game, so nothing in the overall scheme was affected.
