Roger Goodell: We’re Not Trying to Make Officiating Perfect

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has continued the league’s smoothing-over of the recent officiating controversy. 

The Packers VS the Lions on Monday Night Football ignited a debate that had been steadily brewing through the season’s first six weeks.

Coaches are annoyed because the rules are unclear. Everyone is annoyed because replays bog down the game. As well as that, there is a consensus that too many holding penalties are being called.

From the sounds of it, the NFL and Roger Goodell are annoyed, too. Annoyed that the usual adaptation period for new rules has reached its boiling point. Roger Goodell echoed competition committee president Rich McKay’s comments that the new pass interference replay rule will have to be properly assessed at the end of the season.

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“Well officiating is always a focus for us,” Goodell said. 

“I joke but I’m not joking, I’m close to 40 years and I think there’s always two- or three-week period where there’s an intense focus on it. But listen, you never want to see a game where people are talking about officials afterwards. There’s a great football game, played by two great football teams that a really surprising a lot of people about the quality of the way they’re playing. It’s tough. It’s tough to be in that situation. So, we have to continue to do everything to improve officiating. Al and his team and Troy [Vincent] and everyone we’re all focusing on how do we continue to prepare officials obviously using technology when we can. But that’s sports. You see it in every sport.”

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“This is something that we spent a great deal of time on as you know back in the February-March period. Something that coaches felt very strongly,” the Commissioner said. 

“I think they understood that replay was not going to correct every instant replay or pass interference close call. We’re not over-officiating here, we’re not trying to, or possible to make it perfect. And we’re not re-officiating these plays. So, the thought process was to correct the obvious and clear error. So, I think the numbers reflect that. If it’s something close and there’s not obvious and clear evidence, it’s going to stay with whatever is called on the field, and I think the data supports that.

“I think it’s what we anticipated, the coaches anticipated. But as you know whenever there is a rule change, there is a period of adaption. And there’s also a period of where people are testing to try to see. So coaches are testing to see what types of changes are going to be made, are the officials going to be making changes. And I think it’s settling out where we expected it to.”