Play 'Bingo! NFL Referee Edition' With The Officials During Pats-Eagles On Sunday
By Matt Dolloff (@mattdolloff)
BOSTON (CBS) -- At this point, all you can do is laugh.
The officiating in the NFL has gotten so bad in 2015, the referees may have passed the NBA for the worst officials in sports. The weekly bad calls, bad non-calls, ill-timed flags, insufferable timeouts, and bungling of the rules have infuriated fans across the league - either because their team was directly affected by it, or because they are frustrated with the subpar product the league is rolling out this season.
That these gaffes and blunders happen many times every week is a joke. And get ready, New England, because there is bound to be more nonsense when the Patriots play the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday. They are getting Pete Morelli's crew, who officiated last week's Cardinals-49ers game so poorly that they got moved off the Sunday night game (usually the biggest, best game of the week) for Pats-Eagles, and players preemptively accepted fines to publicly blast them.
So for this Sunday's game, and probably for the rest of the season, you can play along with this card and see if the referees can get BINGO! for us. The officiating has been such a joke, it's appropriate to make them the butt of one. It's simple: referees commit a blunder in one of the squares, you mark it. And sadly, getting Bingo is quite possible.
If you REALLY want to play along, here's a printable PDF.
The Patriots are one of the officials' latest victims, after getting absolutely hosed at the end of their loss to the Denver Broncos last Sunday night, their first defeat of the season. The Patriots made their own mistakes, but it doesn't change how badly the game was called. Horrendous phantom calls on Rob Gronkowski and Patrick Chung, the latter of which directly influenced the outcome of the game, derailed the Patriots on both sides of the ball and forced them into a miracle drive to force overtime.
Will we get BINGO! this Sunday? One thing for certain is that Pete Morelli's crew is going to do a horrendous job officiating Patriots-Eagles. Also, someone notify Troy Brown about this.
Matt Dolloff is a writer for CBSBostonSports.com. His opinions do not necessarily reflect that of CBS or 98.5 The Sports Hub. Read more from Matt here. Follow him on Twitter @mattdolloff and email him at mdolloff@985thesportshub.com.
