Crossed signals

Nothing special about NFL's 'all-star' crews

I'll tell you what the problem is with the officiating in the playoffs. The system is based on rewards, not on an attempt for maximum efficiency.

Here's the way it works: All officials are graded within their position to determine which playoff games they'll work. There are 17 crews, so the league rates all the referees, from one to 17, all the umpires, all the head linesman, etc. Then they remove all first-year officials. There were 13 of them this season. The theory is that no matter how good they might be, they still haven't earned the right to make the extra postseason pay. It's like picking a Pro Bowl squad but excluding rookies.

When they have their officials all graded, then they take all the No.1s at each position and give them the Super Bowl to work, plus one extra playoff game. Those are the only people who double up. Then they simply go down the line and combine all the No. 2s and No. 3s for the conference championship games, then combine the fours, fives, sixes and sevens for the divisional playoffs, etc.

By the time you get to the wild-card playoffs you're seeing crews made up of No.10s, or people rated even lower, since 13 rookies have been bounced. Since there are 17 crews, if you've been rated No. 10 at your position, that means you're below average. Yet you're still considered part of what the NFL euphemistically calls an all-star crew. Sure, everyone's an all-star. Let's pick 10 quarterbacks for the Pro Bowl.

That's not the worst part of it. The worst part, and a few officials I've talked to confirmed this, is that they're thrown in with people they're not used to working with. Officials always have to cover for one another in certain situations. Sometimes guys who have been together for a while work out their own set of signals. But now they're thrown in with a new bunch, so you see major communication errors. You see referees trying to cover for the mistakes of their crew and getting nailed or simply bailing out, embarrassing stuff like Ron Winter running off the field after his back judge, Scott Green, screwed up in the Giants-49ers game, or Ron Blum going into a tap dance after his umpire, Chad Brown, wouldn't let the Steelers' Jason Gildon call a timeout because the ump didn't know how many were left.

Why does the NFL have this all-star system? Because it's based on rewards. Higher rankings mean bigger postseason money. The fact that it's inefficient isn't as important.

I think the solution is an easy one. Rank the 17 officiating teams, rather than the individuals who are in them. Then, simply assign your top-ranked teams to the most important games. And don’t, for God’s sake, go 10 deep. Half a dozen is enough, even if it means that the better crews will double up and work two games instead of one.

In the wake of some of the screwups, the same old editorials calling for full-time officials have been dusted off. This doesn't address the problem. Football officials don't work three or four games a week, as they do in baseball, basketball or hockey. They work one. Then they spend a couple of days going over the rules and their assignments. So what would they do for the rest of the week if they were full time? Sit in their hotel rooms and quiz each other, day after day? No, it wouldn't make sense. But neither does the NFL's all-star system.

I have a theory about great defenses. The really good ones I've seen generally have at least one difference-maker on each unit -- line, linebackers, secondary. The really great ones have more, of course, and the all-time units, such as the Steelers of the 1970s, have one at almost every position. If we are to consider the Buccaneers as a really outstanding defensive group, even if they never have won a championship -- and a lot of great defensive teams never won the Super Bowl, Buddy Ryan's Eagles, the Vikings' Purple Gang, etc. -- let's look at each of their units.

Derrick Brooks is the difference-maker among the LBs and has been for some time. Ronde Barber, to me at least, is the big-play guy in the secondary. But how about the line? Warren Sapp is the best for quotes, but have you watched him recently? Against the Steelers, and especially the Niners last weekend? You say you didn't notice him. Join the group. I didn't either. He was going through the motions. At one time, yes, he made a difference, but not lately.

But the unit does have its big-play guy, Simeon Rice, who came over from Arizona last year. It's odd that despite having great defenses the past six years Bucs have never really had an explosive rusher off the edge. But they do now. Last Sunday Rice was fairly well contained for most of the afternoon, but then, early in the third quarter, with the Niners in their no-huddle and driving, desperately trying to get back in the game, he came around the corner on a speed rush, slapped the ball out of Jeff Garcia's hand for the fumble that turned out the lights on San Francisco.

If the Bucs are to have a chance Sunday against Philly, they'll have to make big plays on defense. And Rice, giving away 94 pounds to the Eagles' 349-pound left tackle Tra Thomas, will have his work cut out for him.

I've often wondered what it must be like playing against people 50 to 100 pounds heavier every week. So the other day I got on the phone with Rice and asked him.

"You play low, you play with leverage," he said, "you commit yourself to maximum effort, because if you start going soft, if you relax, those big guys will bury you. It happened to me toward the end of the season. I was sitting there with 14 1/2 sacks, leading the NFC, and I let myself get soft. Maybe I was reading the newspapers or something, but at the end of the year I had to rededicate myself."

It seems there always has been a place for the smallish edge rusher in the NFL, just as every opponent usually goes into a game figuring, Well, we're going to run at him. Fred Dean, the great 240-pound sack artist on the 49ers' first Super Bowl team, faced it, and so did his successor, Charles Haley.

"I never saw Dean play," Rice says, "but I heard about him. I used to like to watch the way Charles Haley played, with all that leverage against the run, and Derrick Thomas was kind of a hero of mine. But when I was in college, at Illinois, my line coach, Denny Marcin, used to tell me stories about Lawrence Taylor, who he'd coached as a defensive end at North Carolina. He said I reminded him of LT, and I ought to get some tape of him, because his game was complete.

"So one day I went to Blockbuster Video and rented a Lawrence Taylor highlight film. His technique and leverage were impressive, but what was most outstanding about him was the relentless way he just went at it, play after play. I told myself, That's what I've got to learn, that commitment to excellence. Well, I'm not there yet, but in this game you grow, and that's where I am right now. And with growth comes prosperity."

I feel sorry for the Raiders. Tennessee's a blue-collar team. So are the Eagles. Who are they gonna trash talk to? Well, yeah, the Bucs, of course, if Tampa Bay gets by Philly and Oakland gets by the Titans, but otherwise, we're going to see that aspect of the pregame hype shut down. This will upset a lot of writers, who seem to use the neverending trash-talk angle as a substitute for any kind of serious reporting. I can't remember ever seeing a postseason in which the Wrestle-o-rama aspects were so blatant.

Does the game really need it? Well, I guess a lot of people feel that it does, because they can't get enough of it. The only thing that bores me more is all this stuff about Oakland's Black Hole, which sounds like something out of the Sci-Fi Channel. Hey, I've covered games in Oakland, going back to the days of the real meanies, Dan Birdwell and Ben Davidson and that bunch. I was never terrified in the parking lot, or walking through the stands. All I saw was a bunch of garage mechanics and accountants with painted faces, all dressed up in fancy costumes. And when the Jets tied the game in the first half Sunday, I didn't even hear any noise from those wild Raiders fans. All I saw were a bunch of silent, glum faces, the same as in any other venue.

Well, I'll find out for myself this weekend, and if you don't hear from me any more, that means I underestimated some of these Oakland folks who have finally gotten a contract out on me.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Paul Zimmerman covers the NFL for the magazine and CNNSI.com. His "Inside Football" column and Mailbag appear weekly on CNNSI.com. To send a question to Dr. Z, click here.

 

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