What an interesting pissing match this has become!! New England, who gets more beneficial calls from the referees than any other team, and their fans VS. Buffalo and their fans who bitch and complain about referees calls more than any other fan base.
Are you serious? that was a great call! You could have used better examples. Yes it does go both ways and did in our game but if it favors one team over another then something needs to be done! I've said it before, the league needs to allow to 2 coach challenges a game on penalties calls (might slow the game down 15 minutes, whoopde do nobody is complaining) a game.
http://www.nfl.com/now/share?id=496f3dde-4e49-457a-9df7-818cbb434253 Watches Hughes. He's on the bottom right or go to about 55 seconds to watch the replay. Friggin ridiculous. All happened while Ridley was on the ground and getting up at the end.
In game action on TV it looks like Hughes was slapping Ridley while he was getting up, I'm fairly certain thats what the refs saw, it;'s what everyone else saw until they showed the 2nd angle of the replay. It's not unlike the time where Gronkowski got penalized for spiking, I can't remember if it was against the Rams or Jets, but he spikes the ball in the endzone and gets a Taunting penalty because another teams player walked in front of the spike and the Ref said that Gronk spiked it in the guys face. Mistakes happen, the refs get caught in a bad angle, they see something they thought happened but didn't, and throw a flag. It's BS but it happens, the Bills are not the first team to get called for it and the Patriots have certainly been victims of nonsense before. Get over it. This is part of why BB wanted penalties to be reviewable over the summer but every other teams owner laughed in his face at the idea. Blame your shitty owners as well. Brady was 15-17 for over 250 yards and 3 TDs and a perfect 158.3 passer rating in the second half, the refs didn't allow those completions, the Bills defense did. They played a great defensive game in the first half and did not adjust for the second half whatsoever. The refs affect on the outcome was minimal, at most. There are times where you need to give the opponent credit and just accept that they executed their gameplan far better.
I watched the video. That is the worst flag I've ever seen. It gets worse every week. Refs are fucking atrocious. Thanks for all the blah blah tho.
At 0:03 seconds: in the 3rd row there's a fat chick wearing shades in the background (right over Charles #96's left shoulder). Is that y0u? http://www.nfl.com/now/share?id=496f3dde-4e49-457a-9df7-818cbb434253
C'mon Dude. Have you ever read the posts on the game threads here? There's a ref bitch on pretty much every play!
I'm not going to argue the correlation between number of total calls and beneficial calls due to the Patriots aggressive play style, but you would think that the numbers would be more in their favor the way people complain about it. http://www.nflpenalties.com/
My original post was in jest but I'll respond. I'm not a big conspiracy theorist or one to bitch about referee bias but looking at stats like that are bogus. I'm sure there are plenty of penalties called on New England throughout games and seasons but that doesn't begin to tell the whole story. It's the little things like the NE first down run on 3rd down where the refs miss or ignore a blatant holding call. Or the 4th quarter phantom P.I. call they tend to get more than anyone to give them their game winning drive... etc. New England probably gets penalties throughout the game but they aren't typically getting the crucial calls against them in third down or 4th quarter situations - I don't know if that's a coincidence. 2012 was an interesting test case. I don't think it's a coincidence that NE started 1-2 with the replacement refs. (and finished 11-2 the rest of the way) - They weren't getting the calls or the benefit of the doubt from the referees that they usually get. They had a rare home opener loss to the eventual 5-11 Cardinals. In that game that they lost 20-18 on a missed FG. But before Gostkowski missed his kick to lose the game there was a crucial holding call on Gronkowski on a Woodhead run that set them back. Those are the kinds of calls that get overlooked by the actual refs in their favor. -In their last second loss to Baltimore the week after, Baltimore got set up for the game winning FG with a crucial pass interference on 3rd down on McCourty. I highly doubt that call happens with the regular referees. -Conversely, Later on in that year, Houston was having a great year. Watt got his nickname J.J. "Swat" because he knocked down so many passes. They go into NE and get steamrolled 42-14 and Watt was non-existent. How? In my life of watching football I have never seen a defensive player get held so much in one game in my life. They eliminated his ability to jump and deflect Brady's passes by grabbing him every time he tried!!! They used the same "game plan" on Watt in their playoff win @ home vs. Houston as well..... Brady is a tremendous QB and New England would still be largely successful over the years anyway. But they coached by a guy who doesn't care about rules and will do anything he can to find an edge or loophole. The same guy who literally has talked about how he employed a defensive game plan with the Giants of - - (paraphrase)"grab or hold the receiver on every play if you have to. The NFL isn't going to want to have a playoff game or SB with all penalties." (I hate Buffalo but that SB loss to the Giants and Belichick's defense was an outright travesty). So basically it's no surprise to me if NE ranks statistically among the league leaders in penalties or something. If they hold J.J. Watt on every play it's bound to get called once or twice during the game. But is it getting called on that 2 minute TD drive before the half? On a key game-deciding 3rd down? 9 times out of 10 it is not...
I'm not going to comment on each individual scenario, but it happens both ways. I could come up with a list of the times where there were controversial calls near the end of games against the Patriots (off the top of my head from last year: Carolina "non-call" and the FG penalty against the Jets). Regarding the "I don't think it's a coincidence that NE started 1-2 with the replacement refs": The Patriots may have been screwed in game three against the Ravens; I was at the game but didn't have the best angle on the play (50 yard line). You'll remember this being the game where BB went ballistic on the refs. Over the last 13 years, the Patriots have got consistently better as the season goes on. The fact that they started 1-2, in which 2 of those games were on the road, with replacement refs is just a coincidence. Edit: Both games the Patriots lost were on FG's in 2012, which further muddy's this point.
At the time I thought Hughes must have used recently "banned" language... I didn't understand that call either. Bottom line though, it lead to zero points for NE. The Patriots currently rank as the 2nd most penalized team in the NFL (54 accepted) and first in penalty yards (526). If they're really as favored by the refs as much as you seem to believe, then imagine what those numbers would be like without that bias! http://www.footballdb.com/stats/penalties.html?sort=numyds
On Manning's miraculous throw and catch by Tyree, maybe you missed the blatant 2 holds and the grab of the facemask that went uncalled on the Giants offfensive linemen, or the arguable in the grasp of the QB? Or the "holding" call on McGinest in the SB against the Rams on Faulk, which was called a good 5 seconds after it happened and AFTER Warner had fumbled and Jones was taking it back for a TD. The Rams ran play action on that play which makes Faulk a ball carryer as far as the Pats are concerned and they had the right to tackle him. It turned a blowout for the Pats into a game decided by a FG at the end. The idea that the Pats get more or better calls just doesn't stand to eye test. Stuff like that happens in football good and bad to every team.
The Pats only get more calls than other teams if you're actively looking for them to get more calls. Theres a belief amongst fans that we get what we want, yet, like you said, we lost a SUPER BOWL, of the best season EVER to that point, for ANY team, due to one of the most blatantly missed-call plays ever seen. So much for favoritism, huh? Luke Kuechly carrying Gronkowski out of the back of the endzone, flagged, correctly, then picked up and the refs sprinted off of the field without an explanation, had the penalty stood as called, Patriots would have had one play from the 1 yard line to have a chance to win. A victory in that game would have had Denver flying into a frigid Foxboro in January instead of us flying to play Denver in 65ยบ Mile High. When you only focus on one team getting a few ticky-tac plays called in their direction you're only going to notice that team getting them. Start watching every game on the weekend, or even pay attention to the calls favoring the Pats opponents, instead of celebrating that it was against the Pats, and you'll notice a whole lot more around the entire NFL than you believe there are. We've been blatantly robbed of first downs in consecutive weeks on crucial plays, 3rd and 1, where our runner was WELL over a full yard past the first down marker, yet he was marked a yard short for no gain, both times. Refs are just awful, I don't believe its bias one way or another. They're just plain horrible at their jobs and call or fail to call inexcusable things.
A large part of controlling the clock is making the other team punt. The Bills had the best offense in the league yet were 1/8 on third down in that game.
the Bills scored 19 pts and had the ball 20 mins. The Giants won for 3 reasons: 1) they controlled the clock on offense 2) the ridiculous 3rd and long where Mark Ingram broke 50 tackles for the 1st down 3) Bruce Smith not being able to strip Hostetler on the safety when the ball was there for the taking.
There was also a really smooth open field tackle by Everson Walls on Thurman Thomas I believe that would have gone for a TD.
