National Football League demotes Cardinals-49ers officiating crew

Pete Morelli’s crew won’t be doing Sunday night’s Colts-Steelers game, but the question is when the league made that decision.

Both the Arizona Cardinals and San Francisco 49ers were deeply unhappy with the job done by referee Pete Morelli’s crew during Sunday’s 19-13 Cardinals win, and apparently the National Football League is cracking down.

“The officials were struggling, mightily”, Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians said following the game. Instead of officiating the high-profile, nationally-televised game between Pittsburgh and Indianapolis, Morelli and Co. will work a different game, according to Pro Football Talk.

There have been countless examples of teams getting screwed by bad calls from the Bills, to the Ravens, the Patriots, the Lions, you could probably find at least one egregious call for almost every team that has either directly cost them the game or at least put them severely behind the 8-ball at some point this season. On a third-and-4 play, Cardinals quarterback Carson Palmer completed a 4-yard pass to Larry Fitzgerald for the first down.

This penalty kept the Cardinals drive alive and allowed them to score effectively ending what was an inspiring effort from a 49ers team that has had an incredibly rough year. After a long discussion, Morelli and his crew assessed the penalty after the two-yard gain. We accept the penalty – that’s first-and-5.

“That’s not what we accepted”, Arians said after the game. “They can try to explain it; they’re wrong”. The side judge responsible for the clock issue in the Steelers-Chargers game was suspended, and the back judge from the Lions-Seahawks game (with a missed illegal batting call) was moved off Colts-New England Patriots the following week.

The NFL has now taken specific action over officiating errors three times this season.