Week 13 NFL Officiating Was Another Disaster, And The League Still Offers Zero Accountability

Once again, officiating is one of the biggest stories of the NFL weekend.

Week 13 opened on Thanksgiving in a division-defining matchup between the Packers and Lions. Green Bay won 31–24, but the game was marred by controversial calls, including the Packers’ first 14 points.

Officials first awarded Green Bay a touchdown on a play in which the receiver appeared to bobble the ball before getting two feet down. It was close. What wasn’t close was a fourth-and-one from the goal line, when the Packers clearly false-started. After throwing the flag, the officials granted a timeout to head coach Matt LaFleur — even though he asked for one after the penalty was committed and called. Green Bay scored a touchdown on the next snap.

The afternoon game between the Cowboys and Chiefs carried the same stakes and the same sloppy officiating. Kansas City was flagged 10 times for 119 yards. Some of that is on the players. Some of it is on officials throwing phantom DPIs and a baffling holding call on rookie Josh Simmons for blocking a defender too hard. That call wiped out a chance at a field goal, and the Chiefs lost the game by three.

"The officiating has been very, very one-sided for Dallas so far," ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky observed during the broadcast.

Then came Sunday night’s Broncos–Commanders matchup, a 27–26 Denver win in overtime. No network is more cautious about criticizing the NFL than NBC, yet even NBC didn’t hold back.

Late in regulation, Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth narrated a replay of a false start call on Washington that simply did not exist.

"Is he not set for a second?" a confused Tirico asked. "No, he is. Wow, I don’t know about that."

"That’s not a foul," Collinsworth said. "It’s really not."

On the next play, Washington quarterback Marcus Mariota was flagged for intentional grounding on a pass downfield that sailed over Terry McLaurin. The 15-yard penalty set up second-and-25 and triggered a 10-second runoff.

NBC rules analyst Terry McAulay immediately stepped in.

"This is absolutely not grounding," McAulay said. "He throws it over the head of No. 17, who is outside the numbers. By rule, that is not intentional grounding."

In overtime, the referees again showed a lack of command over the rules. According to ProFootballTalk, the NFL rulebook states that the team winning the coin toss chooses whether to receive or kick. The other team chooses the direction. But when the Commanders won the toss, captain Tress Way said, "We’re gonna kick that way," and pointed. The referee then turned to the Broncos and said, "You’ll receive, this way."

As Michael David Smith noted, this wasn’t the first time this season an official mishandled the overtime coin toss. It was at least the third.

"This isn’t like missing a holding penalty, the type of call that is impossible to completely eliminate," Smith wrote. "This is about NFL referees understanding the basic mechanics of how to run the game. Mistakes like this should never happen. And yet they’ve been happening, over and over again."

Fans of the teams that benefited from these calls — particularly Packers and Cowboys fans — might argue that these types of errant calls happen every week. They’re right. That’s the problem. These officiating blunders happen every week.

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Despite what you hear, NFL refs are not biased for or against anyone. They’re simply incompetent, don’t understand the rulebook, and actively change the course of the season.

And still, there is no accountability. Players, coaches, and general managers are punished for producing poor results. NFL refs hide behind pool reports, rules that prevent coaches from publicly criticizing officials, and a league office that rarely admits mistakes.

And that’s on the NFL.

Officiating doesn’t improve because the league doesn’t care enough to improve it. With modern technology revealing how often calls are missed, there’s no reason the league can’t use replay assistance to correct calls such as grounding, DPI, or holding. It already takes officials several minutes to sort out many of these decisions. Why not let someone with full video access make sure the call is right?

A quick two-second review could have easily determined whether a timeout was called before or after a flag.

Maybe the NFL simply doesn’t care and views the Monday-morning outrage as part of the entertainment. Or maybe the league is too proud to admit its officials need this much help to do their jobs.

Either way, poor officiating has come to undermine the NFL product. It’s a joke. And there is far too much money at stake — from TV partners to contracts to legalized sports betting — for the league to let this continue.