People who experienced watching the replacement refs, how does it compare to this season?
As someone who experienced the replacement refs back in 2012, I have to say: there has never been a point where I felt the NFL officiating got to that level of bad since the regular refs returned. However, I feel like this season in particular, the quality of officiating has been closer than ever to that 3 week period in 2012. I consider reffing to be broken down into 3 main points of focus.
1: explaining the rulings. This is the one area where the current refs are clearly better than the 2012 replacement refs. The refs have clearly worked hard on figuring out how they word their explanations to the stadium and tv audience. Half of the frustration in 2012 was the replacement refs taking 5 minutes to figure out what to say, only to spout out gibberish.
2: showing no bias. This is not what you think. Before I get called out, I’m going to say that I don’t think the current refs are clearly biased towards any team, no matter how it may seem. But, it’s very clear that the current refs hold bias towards certain players, with the worst being how they handle different QBs. Theres a very clear bias on QB’s with a predetermined caliber of play, and how many RTP, unnecessary roughness, and intentional grounding calls/no calls they get. Say what you want about the 2012 replacement refs, but they were never biased towards any players. They were too incompetent to be biased.
3: impacting the game with incorrect calls. Nothing will ever top the fail Mary. A team clearly won the game, but the replacements refs made the wrong call and gave the win to the other team. So yeah, congrats current refs. They haven’t done that, but the fact that this season you can point to 10+ games indirectly changed the score, maybe even the result, with bad/horrible calls, it’s just been brutal.
For those who want to read more about the 2012 replacement refs short stint, here’s a link.