How to fix the NFL’s horrible officiating

Monday night saw the umpteenth and umpteenth plus one officiating controversies of the 2015 NFL season, as an inadvertent whistle stopped what might have been a Danny Amendola touchdown and Sammy Watkins fell out of bounds to stop the clock with enough time to give his Buffalo Bills one Hail Mary shot against the New England Patriots, yet was bizarrely ruled to have “given himself up” which kept the clock running and ended the game.

Add these to the litany of other ref screw-ups this year the illegal batting in the Lions-Seahawks game, the clock that wouldn’t stop in the Steelers game, the countless pass interference screws-up (and these are only from Monday nighters) and it adds up to a huge problem for the NFL.

Here was Mike Tirico, no NFL shill, but not usually one to rip officiating, talking about it on Monday night, after the Watkins incident: Use new technologies to assist officials, such as chips to help determine the position of the ball (like a Find My Football app?) And, the old standby, make all officials full-time employees.

Give coaches unlimited challenges: Who wants longer NFL games? More opportunities to challenge means more challenging and also the inevitable abusing of the rule, like challenging a play so your defense can rest during Chip Kelly’s frantic three-and-out series.

Use new technologies to assist officials: What are these new technologies? The problem with officials this year aren’t that they don’t know the rules, it’s that the game is so fast that it’s hard to keep up.

Officials know the Sammy Watkins rule, they just made the wrong call on it.

Accept that in the same way a quarterback (usually named Jay Cutler) will make a mistake by throwing a crippling interception or that a running back (let’s go with Eddie Lacy) is going to miss his holes or that a defense (the Redskins) will not be able to tackle, an officiating crew will make mistakes during the game.