The NBA-ification of Football Continues as Officials Prove Once Again They Will Not Call DPI on a Hail Mary

The almost unanimous reaction to last night's near miss for Tampa Bay at Buffalo has been about how rare it was that a perfectly thrown Hail Mary could land harmlessly in the end zone and how weird it was that Chris Godwin never looked for the ball:

But in focusing on those elements, we're missing the much larger picture. How more and more we're seeing situational officiating in the NFL. How certain thing are legal or illegal not based on how it's written in the flipping rule book, but by where, when and to whom the infractions are being made. It's Subjectivity Creep. Where the officials are increasingly looking at what time of the game and what part of the field and who the players involved in a play are, instead of simply what the hell happened. 

And the end of this game was People's Exhibit No. 1,775,642.

Pro Football Talk - There was blatant interference on tight end Cade Otton, who was taken out by two Buffalo defenders just a few feet from where the ball landed. …Taylor Rapp and Christian Benford both mugged Otton.

And, yes, the ball was objectively catchable by Otton. If he hadn’t been eliminated from the play by two guys, he could have caught it.

Somewhat surprisingly, the Buccaneers were not complaining after the game about the lack of a pass interference call in that moment. …

Nobody tripped. Rapp and Benford physically restrained Otton and eventually put him on the ground.

Even with the interference, Tampa Bay receiver Chris Godwin had a shot at making the catch.

“They had a guy pressed on me,” Godwin said after the game, via Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times. 

The fact no one on the Bucs referenced the fact Otton was the meat in the middle of a Bills sandwich at the goal line before getting tossed to the turf shouldn't be taken as something noble, or them putting the failure to convert on themselves. It's something much worse. A tacit acceptance that this is how pro football is refereed now. 

How can we see it any other way? Try to imagine DPI or, at the very least, Illegal Contact, not being called if this happened at midfield. Or in the 2nd quarter. Or if you replace Cade Otton with, say, Travis Kelce:

And I say this as someone who didn't have a dog in the fight. Sure, I'll admit I root against the Bills as a divisional opponent. But I'm coming from the perspective of someone who's been loving NFL football my whole life and is getting increasingly frustrated by what's happening to it. Where, like the NBA, every play is open to some official's interpretation. Not of what did or didn't happen, but of the context of what happened. How obvious penalties like this don't draw a flag due to the time and place, instead of how the rule is written. How we're seeing more situations where a rookie draws a penalty that a veteran with an established reputation doesn't. How we're seeing more flopping than ever before. And it's working because crews don't want to be accused of failing to protect the superstars:

That's a slippery slope to a world where we start to see certain rules being applied to certain specific players; the football equivalent of Lebron James being able to take as many steps as he needs and double dribble to his heart's content with impunity. 

And before I get accused of wanting to see the games be over-officiated, let me remind you I'm demanding the exact opposite. I was just talking to some friends about this play the other day. How Rob Gronkowski was in the exact same situation as Otton in a game at Carolina a bunch of years ago. But in this one, the officials threw the flag. But after a conference, decided to pick it up and the game was over:

At the time, I was doing a weekly radio call in to Felger & Mazz, and their argument to me was that they didn't want to see the officials decide the game. My argument was - and is - that's precisely what they did by picking up the flag. If the blatant penalties by the Panthers then and the Bills last night were calls instead of non-calls, then both the Pats and Bucs would get the ball at the 1 for an untimed play to decide the game. Mano y mano, times 11. Winner take all. And what could be fairer than that? 

What is much less fair is having the rule book thrown out in certain situations and certain times of the game. That undermines everything else going on in the game and erodes confidence that it's all on the level. 

Again, I say this as someone who loves football and just wants to avoid seeing it further compromised. And not someone who's just bitter the officials swallowed their whistles when Chris Hogan got earholed at the end of Super Bowl LII: