Hump Day Headlines: Do We Need a Combine for NFL Refs?
It’s the offseason for 24 NFL teams, and news/rumors are flying around virtually every franchise regarding their futures. Because of the heavy influx of information coming in across the league, it may be difficult to keep up with it all. If that’s the case, you’ve definitely come to the right place. At PurplePTSD After Dark, we have the absolute biggest stories of the week all in one place. Lucky you! Here are all the Hump Day Headlines to get you through the week from ski lessons to a combine for NFL refs.
Ian Rapoport is a Guy Just Being a Dude
If you’ve ever watched NFL football, you’ve probably heard of Ian Rapoport. He has made a living by covering all things NFL at all hours of the day. You won’t ever convince me that guys like Adrian Wojnarowski, Adam Schefter, and others who report news into the wee hours of the night aren’t actually robots, but Ian? No, Ian Rapoport is a dude through and through.
This week, in the midst of the divisional round of the playoffs, Rapoport found the time to get away from the NFL world and steal the hearts of every Minnesotan by taking part in some good old-fashioned skiing. Knar it up, Ian!
NFL Twitter Has Once Again Become Hiring Experts
I’m going to be honest; Twitter dot com has become a cesspool lately. It happens every single year around this time of year, but still, I continue to log into my account and read everyone yell about why or why not a head coaching or GM candidate should be hired. I mean seriously, how many of these guys has everyone heard of until about two weeks ago when they became candidates? My guess is it’s 20% or under, or maybe I’m just an idiot.
I’ve given a couple takes as to why I think a couple of head coaching candidates could be interesting hires, but especially for GM, I’m not touching that with a 39 and a half-foot pole. I consider myself an NFL head, but I’m not deep enough into the rabbit hole to know what every front office person has done with an NFL franchise or how they impacted each move said franchise made. You know who does know these things? People conducting interviews. I’m going to trust them, and you should too.
The NFL Draft Combine, but for Refs
I know why you’re here. You saw the title and wanted to know what in the Sam Hill an NFL Refs Combine means. Because I consider myself to be journalist with the people and for the people, I’m not going to leave you hanging. By now, you’ve probably seen that asinine Dak Prescott QB sneak at the end of the Dallas Cowboys/San Francisco 49ers wild card game about eight dozen times. I tried to defend the play call a little bit, but full disclosure, that may have been the dumbest thing I’ve seen in a football game since…well, December when Antonio Brown turned into a streaker.
My defense of the play basically comes down to this: if the Cowboys didn’t have to rely on a referees 40-yard dash time to determine whether or not they would get the next play off, maybe we aren’t having this conversation. I’m sure Alex Kemp is a decent guy, but he sure seemed like was taking his sweet time to get to the line of scrimmage, and meanwhile, there were probably three or four closer referees that could have just as easily spotted the ball.
Now, maybe Kemp was just gassed, and that’s understandable. After all, it’s strenuous work to be mentally sharp enough to watch every single snap closely enough to determine what each call should be while also sprinting all over the field. But if that’s the case, I beg the question, why in the world is the average age of an NFL referee 51-years-old?
Seriously, Tom Brady looks like a teenage kid next to some of these guys refereeing games. Maybe part of that has to do with the facelifts and hair implants, but certainly another part is that some of them were attending college parties when Brady was born. We’ve seen No. 12 sprint down the field; it’s not pretty. And frankly, maybe a lot of the problems with blown calls in recent seasons have been due to the fact that referees simply cannot keep up with the speed of the game.
We need to fix this problem here and now, and in order to do that, I suggest we put each NFL ref through a combine similar to the one that NFL Draft prospects attend. I realize that they already have a “fitness test” that they go through, but it feels like that is really just doing some yoga and then getting nutritional information class. The biggest qualifier is that they have to be able to complete 13 40-yard dashes with 35 seconds rest between each one. Sounds the old high school FitnessGram Pacer Test…is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues oh god make it stop.
No, it’s time to up the ante. Enough of this schoolyard junk; I’m talking 40-yard dash, cone drill, bench press, the works. Raise the benchmark that candidates have to hit in order to be considered, and that way, we get people calling the games that can actually see what is going on. Maybe make it as a side broadcast alongside the actual NFL Draft Combine (ESPN The Ocho, are you there?). The NFL could definitely make a quick buck off it, and you know they’re all about that bottom line. And then after that’s all taken care of, I don’t know, maybe we can get these people full-time positions? Roger Goodell: hit me up, and we can work this thing out.