Former NFL official and recently-former replay czar Walt Anderson is serving in a communications-style role this year. Those communications include communicating with NFL Network’s audience, as the league-owned outlet’s “Officiating and Rules Analyst.”
It’s a position that had been mostly non-existent in the years since Dean Blandino went to Fox for less stress and more money. In an age of legalized gambling, the complete lack of officiating transparency was becoming more and more glaring.
Now, with Anderson, the NFL can create the impression of transparency. That’s good, but it’s not enough.
It’s one thing to have a mechanism to discuss calls on the air. The bigger challenge is picking the calls to be discussed. Sunday’s segment included an explanation regarding the penalty flag that was picked up on the Cowboys’ first touchdown of the game. (Here’s our story on it; Anderson’s segment omitted reference to the fact that the broadcast incorrectly assumed the call was holding, which could not have been fixed via the replay assistance function.) It omitted any reference to the more controversial moment from that same game.
The officials called Giants tight end Daniel Bellinger for grabbing the facemask of Cowboys linebacker DeMarvion Overshown. As highlighted during the broadcast (after the drive ended), Overshown grabbed Bellinger’s facemask. The end result was a 30-yard swing; the Giants were penalized for 15 yards when they shouldn’t have been, and the Cowboys avoided a 15-yard penalty of their own. The Giants ultimately capped the drive with a field goal.
What could Anderson have said? At a minimum, he should have explained this isn’t something that could have been fixed via replay assistance or full-blown replay review. That would have helped the audience better understand why the mistake wasn’t corrected.
But this would also confirm that the rules allow such mistakes to be made, with no way to rectify them. That’s the real issue. Without a mechanism to correct egregious errors that potentially can impact the outcome of a game, an opening exists for an official who has been compromised by gambling interests to impact the outcome of a game with what appears to be an egregious error.
All it takes is one scandal, and Congress will be in everyone’s business. The NFL can’t prevent the scandal; the NFL can make it harder for the scandal to be implemented.
That’s the challenge. Adding enough layers and levels of real-time oversight to prevent a rogue official from making a “mistake” that is something much more nefarious than that. If the NFL isn’t willing to have Walt Anderson talk about such loopholes to the integrity of the game, there’s no reason to think the NFL will be willing to close the loopholes before it’s too late.
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