What’s Hot and What’s Knott in Football – Week 9

As a product, Thursday Night Football has never been a good idea. The road team has one practice day and one travel day before they’re expected to take on a home team who have been sleeping in their own beds all week. It’s become even worse since Jeff Bezos decided to absorb it into his grotesque empire. 

The 49ers and Rams provided the rare exception to this rule in Week 5 as they went to overtime. And Week 4’s game gave it the old college try as the Cardinals crumbled, allowing the Seahawks to win with a late field goal. In Week 7, the Steelers went the same way in Cincinnati. 

Week 9 served up an absolute dumpster fire, though. The Dolphins’ 22-point loss to the Ravens followed the Chargers’ Week 8 27-point demolition of the Vikings.  

Next week’s lambs to the slaughter are the Raiders, who improved slightly with Brock Bowers’ return (still lost to a Jaguars team without Travis Hunter, though, eeh gads). They meet a Broncos team with their third-best rushing defense in the NFL, who will stuff them like a Thanksgiving turkey. 

There wasn’t even anything hot to talk about from Thursday night’s shemozzle. Derrick Henry went over 100 yards on the ground, and Mark Andrews hauled in two touchdowns, but neither of them really had to try. 

Complaining about officiating in any sport is futile and only ends with officials becoming the target of that small minority of humanity who think abusing people is acceptable. But the standard of officiating certainly appears to be impacting this NFL season, and even more frustratingly, there’s a simple fix. 

Scott Novak’s officiating crew were absolutely Knott. A “tripping” penalty that never was, alongside a penalty being assigned to a jersey number that wasn’t even on the field, made Shawn Hochuli’s Week 8 display look competent. 

It’s not all on the officials, though. The NFL have a crucial role to play in simplifying the zebra’s jobs. 

Finally, after over a century, the NFL has moved on from using the “chain gang” to determine whether the ball has crossed the yard to gain line. The new technology may still be controversial and throw up some surprising results, but no stable individual can blame the officials for missing a first down anymore. 

The league office needs to go one step further and use technology for more than just first downs, scoring plays and turnovers. The resistance to having an extra official in every broadcast truck is perplexing, to say the least. 

Given the proliferation of “officiating experts” on every broadcast, highlighting the egregious mistakes on the field, the NFL has to catch up sooner or later. 

This phantom tripping penalty was spotted in the Prime Video booth, and Terry McAulay even explained why it was wrong in the time it took to announce the play. The “we don’t want the game stopping every play” argument seems more useless than ever in a season when teams are drawing 10 (or more) penalty flags in a single game!