This weeks practices

After watching Pete's press conference I believe the players are going to have raw asses this week and a very hard set of practices.

He was terse, not loose as usual and he said the penalties are on him and that transfers to the players.

I expect lower penalties at least for Mondays game, regardless of how bad officials are league wide.

Largent80":1m48vqf7 said:

After watching Pete's press conference I believe the players are going to have raw asses this week and a very hard set of practices.

He was terse, not loose as usual and he said the penalties are on him and that transfers to the players.

I expect lower penalties at least for Mondays game, regardless of how bad officials are league wide.

Click to expand...

He said the penalties were on him for not properly scouting the officiating crew.

It was a slam on the officials in affect pointing out that they shouldn't need to be scouted because they shouldn't be part of the game results.

RichNhansom":11vab87b said:

Largent80":11vab87b said:

After watching Pete's press conference I believe the players are going to have raw asses this week and a very hard set of practices.

He was terse, not loose as usual and he said the penalties are on him and that transfers to the players.

I expect lower penalties at least for Mondays game, regardless of how bad officials are league wide.

Click to expand...

He said the penalties were on him for not properly scouting the officiating crew.

It was a slam on the officials in affect pointing out that they shouldn't need to be scouted because they shouldn't be part of the game results.

Click to expand...

This is the problem with NFL games these days. Scouting officials?...REALLY?

I get that Pete wants his players to be on the edge of penalties, but these refs nowadays can't call a game evenly. It seems like they are on the take sometimes. It is making the game not fun to watch or support.

Largent80":3rgyhrcf said:

I get that Pete wants his players to be on the edge of penalties, but these refs nowadays can't call a game evenly. It seems like they are on the take sometimes. It is making the game not fun to watch or support.

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While I don't think that they're on the take, they certainly don't help themselves by perpetuating the theory with consistently bad calls / no calls. It's not just when we're playing. The league and the refs are going to kill the game for some of us if this continues.

What was the penalty count against OAK, 23? I didn't actually watch that game but holy shit!

Players just flat out don't know what they can / cannot do from game to game because the officiating is so inconsistent. It's mind boggling to watch OL play be called differently for two teams. Avril, Bennett, Clark... all held constantly with no call but Seattle manages to draw a flag for a block in the back that had no impact on the play.

It just takes the wind out of your sails as a fan. If our offense wasn't so terrible right now, I'd probably be more upset but for me, it's just disappointment and it makes me want to stop watching.

Largent80":2efmyzxs said:

This is the problem with NFL games these days. Scouting officials?...REALLY?

I get that Pete wants his players to be on the edge of penalties, but these refs nowadays can't call a game evenly. It seems like they are on the take sometimes. It is making the game not fun to watch or support.

Click to expand...

Actually, given that Pete always wants to play on the edge, I'm stunned that he doesn't do this.

Look, these rules are open to interpretation. And different people are going to interpret based on their own personal bias. To think that different crews don't see things differently is to simply be willfully ignorant of the nature of subjective interpretation.

Baseball has been doing this for decades. It's just a natural part of human nature. Not all crews will call the games identically -- in fact it's almost a certainty that they will not. If Pete wasn't scouting and coaching and instructing his players based on who was making the calls then that was him being naive. Period.

Not understanding the tendencies of an officiating crew, when you intentionally skirt the edge of legality is just plain dumb. The only problem I see here, is in the expectation.

I can just see Belichick chuckling to himself right now. Is there anyone who doubts that Evil Bill has a book on every ref and their tendencies?

For the record, I don't think it's about being on the take or anything like that at all. I think it's a collection of people that see subjective interpretation differently. No different than every one of us chiming in with our opinions here. All officials at every level of every sport will see things differently. Knowledge of those variables is absolutely vital. And Pete's admitted misunderstanding of that human element is strangely bizarre and also explains to a great degree why we have continued to struggle with penalty disparity for years.

Frankly, I am just stunned at Pete's reaction. I'm half wondering if he's just misleading us. He's so talented at understanding human nature with respect to players and coaches and staff. I can't believe he actually doesn't understand this regarding officiating crews.

I would hope beyond hope that Pete hires a staffer whose sole responsibility is to analyze officiating crews' natural subjective tendencies. Maybe make that hire today. That would go a long way to cutting down the penalty gap for us.

Seahawks problems are they were too good at what they do, Fisher, Arians and others now lobby and campaign against what we do within the rules, they lobby hard so anything questionable gets a flag, if we were 1 and 6 do you think we would get this attention?

Pete doesn't seem to be a guy that goes out and complains about everyone else, were suffering from success and are under a different set of rules much tighter and not given room for benefit of incidental contact and get the blind eye on other infractions to level the playing field, see holding by lineman. Or OPI we get flags for that Jones can use a full blown head slap and not get a flag in the wide open field.