Let’s get right into it.
With about two minutes to go in Sunday’s NFC Championship Game, Drew Brees’ third-down pass to Tommylee Lewis fell incomplete after Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman annihilated him before the ball even got there. There were a number of calls the refs could’ve made, but they chose to call nothing and deem the play incomplete.
The missed call has drawn up many complaints from Saints players, to fans online, to former head coaches, and from players on other teams.
Here’s the kicker, Roger Goodell actually has the power to do something about it.
There’s language in the rule-book that could allow the Commissioner to take extreme action in the face of a grossly unfair result, according to Pro Football Talk.
“Consider Rule 17, Section 2, Article 1: “The Commissioner has the sole authority to investigate and take appropriate disciplinary and/or corrective measures if any club action, non-participant interference, or calamity occurs in an NFL game which the Commissioner deems so extraordinarily unfair or outside the accepted tactics encountered in professional football that such action has a major effect on the result of the game.”
And here’s where it gets even juicier. Consider Rule 17, Section 2, Article 3: “The Commissioner’s powers under this Section 2 include . . . the reversal of a game’s result or the rescheduling of a game, either from the beginning or from the point at which the extraordinary act occurred.”
This means Roger Goodell would have to call out the particular ref who screwed up the result and admit the officials completely screwed up the job they are paid to do. The backlash from this could be castrophic as refs around the league would try to take some type of action. The liklihood of Goodell doing something like this is slim, but the power to do it is there if he wanted to.
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