After Packers-Chiefs Debacle, Blandino Offers Officiating Solution

The final 1:19 of the Green Bay Packers’ victory over the Kansas City Chiefs was filled with drama and controversy.

On the second play of the final drive, Packers safety Jonathan Owens was flagged for unnecessary roughness after hitting Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes at the sideline. Both of Mahomes’ feet were inbounds but Owens was penalized, anyway.

Packers coach Matt LaFleur was furious – especially when he directed another official’s attention to the Lambeau Field replay board – but nothing could be done to change the call.

A couple plays later, Mahomes fired a deep ball to receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling. Rookie cornerback Carington Valentine arrived early for what appeared to be an obvious pass-interference penalty, but no flag was thrown.

Chiefs coach Andy Reid was furious but, again, nothing could be done to change the call.

Doesn’t the NFL need a way to fix blatantly wrong calls?

Said LaFleur with a well-timed smile: “I think when there’s clear and obvious situations – I’m not talking about this specific play but, [for example], a hit, when it’s in bounds, yeah, you’d like to think there’s something that could be done to remedy that. But that’s obviously above my pay grade.”

Fox Sports officiating expert Dean Blandino helped create the NFL’s replay system. Nobody’s perfect, and officials like referee Brad Allen and his crew on Sunday night will inevitably make mistakes, but Blandino sees ways for the league to step in to fix obvious errors.

“You’ve got to get those calls right on the field,” Blandino told Packer Central on Wednesday. “Like you said, as human beings, we all make mistakes. It’s going to happen. Certainly, in critical situations, you don’t want to have any mistakes, but it is what it is at that point.

“But I think you look at the replay, you look at technology, there’s an opportunity when everybody can see it. And I’ve kind of done a 180 on this from when it first started and replay was limited. The technology has gotten better. The ability to seamlessly come in and help the officials get something right, that’s going to be critical.”

Blandino didn’t want to go so far as replicating the college system, in which a menu of things are up for review on every snap, whether it’s Play 1 or Play 131. But there is a time and a place for an officiating intervention.

“I’m not talking about with 12 minutes to go in the first quarter,” he said. “There’s a lot of football left after that. We can’t be re-officiating every play. I think there’s an opportunity if we set the last 5 minutes to the fourth quarter, the last 2 minutes, whatever it is, if something is going to significantly impact the outcome of the game and it’s clear and obvious that it’s a mistake, then we have the video, we have the technology, the ability to say, ‘We’re going to step in, we’re going to correct it,’ whether that’s adding a flag or picking up a flag.”

Too much is at stake for enormous officiating mistakes that carry enormous consequences. Because of the Owens penalty, the Packers could have lost a game that kept it out of the playoffs. Because of the non-call on Valentine – the worst blown-PI call that Blandino has seen since the 2018 NFC Championship Game between the Rams and Saints – the Chiefs might wind up losing homefield advantage.

That’s why Blandino hopes the league expands the review process in at least a limited capacity to eliminate the obvious blunders at critical junctures of a game.

“I think that’s the next step,” he said. “I think that’s something the league has to consider because these situations, they have tremendous impact on not just that game, but then you think about playoff implications, you think about jobs, you think about all of these things that go into it, it’s a lot. …

“When everybody can see it, and we have an opportunity to correct it. I think we have to at least explore that.”

Where the officials did get it right was in the timing following the Rashee Rice fumble, Isiah Pacheco ejection and officiating review sandwiched between the other two controversial plays.

Allen reset the clock to 50 seconds – the time of the tackle on Rice – but there was not a 10-second runoff.

“It’s interesting. It’s a good question and it came up,” Blandino said. “Normally, had there not been a foul during the play, there would be a runoff. But because there was a flag during the play, the clock would have stopped, anyway.”

The clock wasn’t put into motion pre-snap, either, so the Chiefs got to treat a tackle-inbounds play as if the tackle were out of bounds. Again, that was officiated correctly.

“By rule in the last 5 minutes of the fourth quarter after a penalty, the clock starts on the snap. It’s just an unusual situation,” Blandino said.

LaFleur, whose team survived the Owens penalty to win a third consecutive game, understands the incredible challenge the officials have given the speed of the game. All he wants is consistency.

“If you call it one way, call it that way the whole game. And call it for both teams,” he said. “That’s when you get frustrated is when you see inconsistencies, especially in game. There’s going to be differences within crews. We all see things a little bit differently, and that’s fine.

“You always give your team the report on what this crew typically calls. If you feel it early in the game that they’re going to call it tight, then you’d better adapt and change the way you play. Or, if they’re letting you play, then sometimes you can play a little bit more aggressive depending on the position.”