00:00SBJ, what's on your mind, man?
00:03Oh, it's about the NFL.
00:04And since you're a former player, I want to just ask you this.
00:08And we don't have to spend a lot of time on it because I know we've got some ball to
00:10talk about.
00:11But have you ever seen the officiating in the NFL be as horrendous as it is in this football season
00:17this year?
00:18The Zebras have completely taken over the joy of watching the National Football League for me.
00:23And, Dan, they have to fix it.
00:25I know that we say this as analysts and we say this as people that watch the game, even former
00:29players.
00:30But I was watching that Packers-Lions game.
00:32Tom Brady almost thought about coming out of retirement because he was looking at how these quarterbacks are getting treated
00:36in the backfield with the terrible calls that they're getting.
00:39The thing about this, Dan, is I just don't understand, and this is my biggest gripe with officiating, is how
00:45in the current level of the NFL play we have right now, in the way the rules are adjudicated,
00:51how can we have things that are non-reviewable in the NFL currently?
00:55I don't understand why we can't just say every single play in the NFL is reviewable.
01:00Now, you don't change how many challenges a coach has.
01:02You don't change what gets looked at by the rooms.
01:04But everything is looked at.
01:06Everything is able to be changed.
01:08They make too many mistakes, and they're humans.
01:10I understand that.
01:11But the fact of the technology that we have nowadays to be able to actually make the correct call on
01:15the field,
01:15especially when we're seeing so many egregious errors that are not only frustrating to watch but are changing the tenure
01:22of the game,
01:23how do you not fix that in the offseason?
01:25So Roger Goodell has a lot of things that he has to figure out with this officiating and the way
01:29the games are adjudicated.
01:30And I think that starts with maybe looking at some of the baseline rules and the way that they are
01:35looked at on a game-to-game basis.
01:36But I just got – it's so frustrating for me, and I'm sure as somebody who, again, you know, you
01:41played,
01:42you know what that's like for the players and the coaches, but it's infuriating.
01:46And with how much we love the game and love the game of football and watching it week in and
01:50week out, they have to fix it.
01:52Okay, so I'm going to tell you why and where they are right now.
01:56There's 52 cards in the – there are 52 cards in the deck, right?
02:00They drop it on the table.
02:01They get to pick and choose, and they tell you what rules we're going to change,
02:07what rules you can't challenge, what rules you can't do.
02:11Theoretically, they're setting the deck.
02:14They're changing the game a little bit because of analytics and also what's the most important thing.
02:20Bro, you don't want to see Case Keenum and Nick Foles in a Super Bowl or in an NFC championship.
02:25They're going to do everything in their power to make those stars not get hurt.
02:30It's all about TV right now.
02:33Dude, do you know that 97% of the NFL's annual revenue that goes to these teams comes from television?
02:40It doesn't come from people sitting in the stands.
02:44They don't care if you're in the stands anymore.
02:46They care you're watching TV, and they care you're guys like my producer, Chris,
02:51that's constantly putting prop bets down on whether or not a guy gets 100 yards, whether he gets a TD.
02:57That's what's really generating the game.
03:00Here's something else to think about, too, SBJ.
03:03Back in the day, in a 35-10 blowout, people would change the channel.
03:08Well, guys like Chris, my producer, are going to sit there and watch and see if his boy gets 100
03:12yards
03:12or if he's going to get a touchdown because he's got a prop bet on it.
03:16Gambling has changed the entire landscape of what to call, what not to call.
03:21That's why it really looks inconsistent right now.
03:25And, dude, the commissioner's office, they make the changing of the calls or not from the commissioner's office?
03:32How is that not a conflict of interest?
03:35That's like paying a doctor to look at your players and say, I got the player's best interest at heart
03:41when the doctor's being paid by the owner.
03:44That's where the NFL is, man.
03:45This is all entertainment now.
03:47Now, you're a purist.
03:49You love the game, okay?
03:51Man, they're a TV entertainment company now.
03:54That's what the NFL is.
03:55It's all about entertainment, my friend.
03:57Yeah, no, I get it.
03:59And, again, I'm with your producer.
04:00You know, I love a good prop bet myself, and I love, you know, getting Mike, watching Mike.
04:04And that's the other frustrating thing, too, Dan, is we have, I think that you can agree, this is the
04:08best level of talent in the NFL we've ever seen.
04:12We've got guys doing stuff night in and night out that is just astronomically incredible.
04:17And then a moment gets ruined because a zebra decides that he saw something that he didn't actually see.
04:22So I get the point, and I understand that there's bigger things at play here.
04:25I just wanted to get that out there, especially for you as a former player, and talking about just, you
04:30know, they need to at least fix something about this.
04:33Whether you said, like they said, whether they will or not because they have other interests at heart, I don't
04:38know.
04:38But we'll see if they're able to fix something going into the offseason into next year.
