Monday Night Football Proves NFL Must Settle Referee Dispute Now

The Monday Night Football matchup between the Denver Broncos and Atlanta Falcons should have been a great game—the perfect capper to a week of NFL action, featuring two of the game's premier signal-callers in Matt Ryan and Peyton Manning.

Instead, the game was a herky-jerky mess that only served to underscore the storyline that dominated the National Football League in the second week of the season: The "officiating" by replacement crews is an absolute joke, and the NFL needs to resolve its labor dispute with the regular officials yesterday.

There was one play that was a perfect microcosm of the mess that replacement officiating has become.

On a 4th-and-1 from the Atlanta 43 late in the second quarter, Denver quarterback Peyton Manning threw an incomplete pass. The Falcons were flagged (correctly) for defensive holding on the play, and the ball was then spotted at the Atlanta 32.

Defensive holding in the NFL is a five-yard penalty. In college football it's 10. In no organized football league on the face of the earth that I'm aware of is defensive holding an 11-yard foul.

Mind you, this was just one of a handful of blown calls in one game in a weekend that was littered with them to the point that it staggers the mind. And after the Twittersphere exploded with blasts of the blown call, Mike Pereira, the former vice president of officiating in the NFL  who has been a very vocal critic of the replacement officials, once again made his feelings known.

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There is no way to keep with your tweets. Just know I feel your frustration. This is not the NFL I worked for. Don't care whose fault it is.

— Mike Pereira (@MikePereira) September 18, 2012"

It's not just fans and broadcasters who have tired of this farce either. More and more players and coaches are making their feelings known about the situation, including superstars such as Ray Lewis. The Baltimore Ravens linebacker vented to WNST via  the Washington Post after the Ravens lost a ridiculously chippy game to the Philadelphia Eagles.

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“The time is now,” Lewis said after the Baltimore Ravens lost to the Philadelphia Eagles. “How much longer are we gonna keep going through this whole process? I don’t have the answer, I just know across the league teams and the league are being affected by it. It’s not just this game, it’s all across the league. And so if they want the league to have the same reputation it’s always had, they’ll address the problem. Get the regular referees in here and let the games play themselves out. We already have controversy enough with the regular refs calling the plays.”

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It would seem that the only parties who don't want to see the curtain fall on this comedy of errors is Emperor Goodell and the NFL. Rather than sit down and hammer out a compromise that would get the regular officials back on the field, the NFL is instead focusing its efforts on sending memos to all the teams warning coaches not to "bully" the officials, according to Jay Glazer of FOX Sports (via Pro Football Talk).

The fact that these officials can be bullied only underscores why they need to go.

Roger Goodell loves to trumpet about the "integrity" of the NFL, but the fact of the matter is he's turning a blind eye while that same integrity is being dragged through the mud.

The mud is then whistled for a 12-yard offsides call.

We've all seen the joke. The joke isn't funny. Even a little bit.

And it needs to stop. Now.

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