Every once in a while the curtain is drawn back and the public, ever spoon-fed publicity and hot air, is treated to a dose of honesty.
A blast of aggrieved frankness came over the weekend from Sean McDermott, the head coach of the Buffalo Bills, when he called out refereeing and general N.F.L. incompetence following a playoff-altering call in overtime, when the Bills’ Brandin Cooks appeared to hit the ground after a catch deep in Denver territory only to have the ball ripped from his grasp by a Broncos defender for a ruled interception.
It was a close one. But even if the two caught it jointly, the rules say possession stays with the offense, not unlike that old baseball saw that a tie goes to the runner.
“That’s a catch all the way,” McDermott said after the game. “I sat in my locker and I looked at it probably 20 times, and nobody can convince me that that ball is not caught and in possession of Buffalo. I just have no idea how the N.F.L. handled it, in particular, the way that they did. I think the players and the fans deserve an explanation.”
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Not to get too into the weeds, but he had to use up a timeout to force a pause in the game to try to get the refs to look again and think it over, or, the way these things go these days, ask the big boys in New York for a review, because the winner would be one game away from the promised land, the Super Bowl.
All McDermott wanted was a fair shake. And preferably the ball on the Denver 20-yard line. He got neither. By Monday he was out of a job.
One reason it’s painful to see McDermott go — and the Steelers’ Mike Tomlin, for that matter, forced out for the crime of, no, not losing, simply not winning enough — is the sense that these coaches of character, these throwbacks, were a bulwark against the flood of sports betting and the idiocy that comes with it. Taking a cue from the newly anything-goes society around it, the league has gone from merely accepting advertising from FanDuel and DraftKings to incorporating them into broadcasts and programming to an embarrassing degree. (Forget bonds and money markets, kids, just throw your dollars away!)
For now, football’s savagery seems somewhat out of reach of the kind of point-shaving scandal that just rattled the N.B.A. But how long before you doubt what you see when that late field goal is missed wide right?
And no upstanding referee will be able to do anything about it.