dueceloose

Those who are really into the game are more worried about the action than the commentators but i just hate when they speak bad on the saints or become captain obvious smh.

Refs are human they make mistakes but the get paid while their doing it. Is it Monday yet?

SaintsBro

It's not exactly hatred for refs, but I do feel like, a lot of the time, the Saints and Sean Payton are just TOO FAST and TOO DARN GOOD for certain of the refs to keep up with. The game has gotten really fast and really extreme, and the Saints play with SO MUCH finesse, to the very limits of ability and to the edge of the rules -- and not every ref is truly up to the challenge of dealing with that.

I remember a play against the Falcons in Atlanta a couple of years ago, where Jimmy Graham caught a pass by cradling underneath the ball with his fingertips, and Mike Smith burned a time out, just to stand there and watch it over and over, on the Jumbotron screen. He was right there, when it happened, he saw it. But it was so awesome, he couldn't believe it was a catch. He was literally dumbfounded by it.

Payton has thrown the challenge flag many times, merely to point something out to the ref that they didn't see, or correct a call they got wrong. He's burned time outs just to pause the game and explain to the ref what they got wrong, and why. I think of things like the famous 2-point conversion catch by Lance in the Super Bowl. That was a catch, but the ref didn't see it as one, so Payton had to challenge it and make him patiently watch it again, slowed down, to show him it was a catch...there was one time last year when we had the replacement refs, we had Saints offensive linemen showing the referees where to correctly spot the ball, like no, not there, it should go here.

It was Reggie who actually made the NFL change the rules, about extending the ball grazing over the pylon and going out of bounds. They also changed the rules for overtime, directly because of the New Orleans Saints. Plus many other examples.

So it becomes like playing the game against your grandpa or against the cranky old teacher who is half senile and tries to flunk everybody. I don't hate the refs but I don't always have high opinions of them, either. Some of them are extremely sharp, but some of them are not ready for prime time, and should only be crewing the games with the bottom-feeder, 2-win teams or smaller markets, or not even in the pros.

Choupique

i use the mute button a lot and rarely hear a talking head, so i can't relate to being impacted by losers on the idiot box.

the volume knob is there for a reason.