Well, here we are, Monday after the Superbowl and all the Armchair Coaches and Referees come out with their analysis. I don’t blame anyone for doing this. It’s in our nature to talk about the game and outcome and how it could have been changed if just this or that happened.
However, what I see mostly is people blaming the referees for the outcome. I have been involved in sports pretty much my whole life as a player, coach and referee and what I can say is that it is a very rare occasion when the referees are the cause of one team winning or losing and last night was not one of them.
Until you have been on a field or court deciding whether or not to make a call because you are trying to decide if it reached the level of a penalty or if you saw the play clearly enough to make a definitive call or if the play in question is being called differently due to rule changes or did I/we make the same call on the other team in order to be consistent. There are many different things that go through a referee’s mind before he/she decides to throw a flag or blow the whistle. It’s an extremely difficult job and decisions are made in the moment and although there are some cases where there are replay reviews, the referee cannot rely on that to confirm or overturn a call.
Last night’s game was not decided by the officials. In my opinion, there were some poor coaching decisions and failed execution of plays on both offense and defense and by both teams. In the end, if you did not put yourself in a position where a call here or there could really affect the outcome, then you didn’t do enough to win the game.
Sure, would the offensive pass interference call on Kittle put the 49ers in a place to put more points on the board before the end of the half, perhaps, but if the 49ers had called a timeout before the punt, they would have had more time to make the plays necessary to score before the half despite the call. Was there holding on the long pass in the 4th quarter that put KC in a place to score, sure, but how did the defense, who should have known they were going to try to go long, allow a receiver to be that wide open to make that play in the first place.
While I would have liked to see the 49ers win the Superbowl, I give a lot of credit to the Chiefs for hanging in there and fighting back to win the game in the 4th quarter. They proved themselves to be the better team when it mattered most.
I have been known for being vocal at games where I feel the refs are missing calls or just truly aren’t doing a good job and that was at the youth, high school and college levels but even in those cases it was very rare for the referees to have truly altered the outcome of the game. As for the refs last night, they are human and make mistakes but for the most part they did their jobs pretty well and if anyone feels they can do better, then they should go out and get their credentials to ref at this level.
Musings From My Massage Chair 