Goodell Finally Feeling the Pressure?

This week due to the lack of Football being played, the main topic of discussion leading up to the Superbowl has been the officiating. This whole season the officiating has been beyond poor, to the point where it's inexcusable and can't be ignored. Plenty of times throughout the year, refs made calls/no calls that truly impacted the game to its core. I truthfully don’t think anybody knows what a catch is anymore because even the refs this year have been calling that in dramatically different ways. The sport of Football is being ruined by the greed and legacy of the commissioner. 

The Chiefs Being Favored   

Roger Goodell commented on the speculation of teams being favored by the refs this week “It's a ridiculous theory for anyone who might take it seriously” he concluded. The thing is, it is obvious to not only NFL fans, but just the general public that the Chiefs are getting a weird version of favoritism when it comes to officiating. The main counter argument to this is that the Chiefs have been penalized the same amount if not more than majority of NFL teams. That’s a good argument if the games weren't on video. It is not about how much your team is penalized in today's game but more about when the penalty occurs. A team may not be penalized all game until that one defining play and all of a sudden their drive is killed by a single penalty, killing all their momentum on a big 4th Quarter drive, leading to a completely different game because of that one momentum killing flag that shouldn't have been called. That is where the favoritism lies, in the timing of these bogus flags, the Chiefs rarely have these weird controversial calls go against them or deter them. The AFC Championship game was a big highlight for this, because it happened in both halves, the first one being on a 3rd and 5, Mahomes throws a 50/50 ball up to Worthy in the last 3min of the half, its jump ball that hits the ground with no clear evidence of Worthy having control of the ball. Matter of fact it looked like the Bills player had more possession of the ball when it hit the ground, but the ball was ruled a catch by Worthy, even though the ball clearly hit the ground  without being in clear possession of Worthy leading to another Touchdown for the Chiefs. Then we transition into the end of the second half, Dalton Kincaid gets a 3rd down pass and gets about an inch away from the first down, they should have challenged the spot, but then again with how 50/50 calls are against the Chiefs you don’t want to risk it, when you know you're 6’5 Josh Allen can easily sneak it. So the dreaded 4th down and inches comes along, and you run the “tush push”, and from a viewer standpoint and one of the refs viewpoint, the ball has crossed the line for a first down. Then comes the superior ref who overrules the ref who said it was a first down, they mark it short and go to review. Here's where it should have been easily overturned because New York is supposed to have all the angles, but still it came back as short of the line to gain, when it was clearly a first down. This obviously led to the Chiefs making another Super Bowl and the Bills losing once again to Mahomes. The reason for the outrage isn’t just because of this one game, no, it's been happening all season and even before the game happened, majority of fans were wary about how well officiated the game was gonna be. There is piles of overwhelming video evidence of the Chiefs getting the benefit of the calls, and when your offense can’t put up over 30 points in 1 game all year but still somehow went 15-1 and to the Superbowl, it raises a lot of red flags that can’t be ignored by just denying them.

Goodell is now in the position where he has to provide evidence that he is not manufacturing the game, and if he doesn’t, but just keeps denying it, allowing the problem to continue, then he has to go or the sport will be ruined.