21
Oct
2009
SHOCKER: Mike Pereira defends Referees on Browns/Steelers call (video)
By ArtieFufkin
Every Wednesday on NFL Total Access, Mike Pereira – the NFL’s VP of Officiating – joins Rich Eisen for a segment called “Official Review” where they discuss the most controversial calls from the previous weekend.
Sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? The problem is that Pereira is clearly a robot programmed to back up his part-time employees’ calls. No matter how egregious they are, no matter how much blatant visual evidence there is to the contrary, Pereira always seems to find a way to justify or rationalize the calls on the field.
The most recent example came this evening, when Pereira reviewed this astonishingly bad call from Sunday’s Steelers/Browns match-up:
Fair enough, Mike. The camera shot was definitely from an angle, which could account for a skewed perspective of the ball position on TV. So the other people on the field must have seen the same thing Anderson saw, right? Surely the Steelers felt they had gotten the first down, right? Not exactly:
Even Steelers center Justin Hartwig said the ball was “definitely short” of the first-down marker.
“I have no idea how they gave us a first down, but we’ll take it,” Hartwig said. “I’d say (it was short) by two chain links. It was obvious to everybody playing on the field. I don’t know how they called it the way they did, but … we’re not going to complain about it.”
“It was a close play – and we got lucky,” Roethlisberger told the Associated Press after the game.
Huh. That’s weird. I guess ole’ Walt must have had a better view than the center and QB on the play. Which was a QB sneak, mind you.
Uhhhh … Mike?
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This is a total PR job.
The league has chosen to quietly kill the Browns with the H1N1 virus. This would be harder to do off a win over the Steelers. The refs stepped in to do what the league needed them to do.
RIP new Browns (1999-2009).
It’s been fun.
This is what it is every year. It has become self abuse to be a browns fan. We seem to be cheated at critical moments every year. I love the team, and feel like I’ve been punched in the gut every time this happens.