The Worst Calls in NFL History (Even the NFL Admitted It)

And even he couldn't believe what he was watching, and he's far from the first. That's all I'm going to say. It was an embarrassment. I've never seen anything like that in all my years of football. I'm trying my best. I'm 340, 25 pounds, okay? What do you want me to do? Apparently, the sack now comes with a gymnastics assessment. Different year, same speech. In my eyes it was, yes. In my eyes it was. I don't think it's... Great officiating, if I'm being completely honest. That's a textbook tackle. That's not roughing the pass. Watch the receiver. Now look where the ball is. No flag. You don't need a striped shirt to see it. Wearing one doesn't always help. Is the NFL becoming unwatchable? If you've ever yelled at your TV over a yellow flag, you're not the only one. This is a $23 billion league. It sells you the integrity of the game, fines players for criticizing the refs, and explains a game-deciding call to one pool reporter, if anyone asks. You get one line. The result is final. Ten calls so bad the NFL had to answer for them. And one comes with an admission from the referee himself. He impacted a Super Bowl. Heads or tails, how hard can it be? Thanksgiving, 1998. Steelers and Lions, tied at 16 in overtime. Jerome Bettis calls the toss. Referee Phil Luckett says heads. It lands tails and Detroit wins on its first drive. Bettis says he called tails. Luckett says he heard heads tails and took the first word. The coin is already up and Bettis is still talking. Tails. Even the cleaned up audio caught both words. Heads came first. So was Luckett wrong? Maybe not. The procedure was. Call it mid-flip and everything rides on one word nobody can check. He heard the, maybe the, huh, and said, and kind of cut it off and assumed that it was heads. I got fired from the coin toss. Coach Cowher fired me. The commissioner's ruling? However, their conflicting accounts do not resolve the matter. Translation? We've got nothing. The NFL had to rewrite its coin toss. Its coin toss. From then on, the visitor calls it before the coin goes up. Four days, start to finish. Remember that number. Monday night, 2019. Detroit leads Green Bay 22-13 in the fourth. Flowers sacks Aaron Rodgers. Flag, hands to the face. Sack gone, Packers score. Then, with a minute 36 left, the same flag again. Green Bay wins on a field goal, 23-22, zero. That's how many times Trey Flowers had been flagged for hands-to-the-face in five seasons. Watch his hands. The standard is forceful, prolonged contact to the head or neck. Does that look like either one? The next day, the league's football operations chief, Troy Vincent, said it flat out. The foul wasn't there. It seems like that's been the theme across the NFL. Detroit versus everybody. ESPN's Dan Orlovsky. America's favorite sport, at times, is becoming unwatchable because of bad officiating. The usual answer, just win by more. Detroit led by 9. We'll let the players know that winning by a normal amount is now considered poor planning. The league admitted it, the scoreboard never got the memo. A flag on the field, announced to the whole stadium, then gone. Arlington, January 2015, the playoffs. Detroit leads Dallas 20-17 in the fourth. The throw goes to Brandon Pettigrew, and the back judge flags Dallas for pass interference. Referee Pete Morelli announces it. Then the headlinesman walks over and says it's face guarding, which isn't a foul. The flag comes up. Dallas wins 24-20. Flag on the board. Announced. Then... Gone. Now back up. Before the throw. A hand on the jersey. The league called that holding. To me, you can't pick that flag up. Hitchens was not playing the ball, shoved with his left arm first. You've seen the replay. I've seen it too many times. That's interference. A day later, the league admitted the hold. A day too late. October 2024. Rams 28, Vikings 20. Under two minutes left. Minnesota deep in its own end. Byron Young grabs Sam Darnold's face mask and takes him down in the end zone. No flag. Safety. Hand on the helmet. Head yanked around. Remember the pool reporter? Referee Tra Blake's explanation. His view was blocked, and so was the umpire's. We did not see it, so we couldn't call it. Under the rules then, a missed facemask couldn't be reviewed, even on a scoring play. The Vikings coach and quarterback didn't blame the refs for the loss. Both saw the grab. They can be polite. We don't have to be. It looked like he got a pretty good amount of facemask there. The facemask or, you know... It is what it is. They miss it all the time, and it's an easy fix. The league fined Young for it. The score stayed 30-20. In 2015, the league let replay remove a face mask flag, not add one. The replay showed the grab. The system was not allowed to care. The ball is on the ground, the Chargers have it, and none of it counts. September 2008, Denver. The Broncos trail 38-31 in the final minute. Jay Cutler drops back and the ball slips out of his hand. Replay shows a fumble, but referee Ed Hockley had already blown the whistle. Denver keeps the ball. The rule? Once the whistle blows, the play is dead, even if the whistle was a mistake. Ball on the grass. The whistle had already blown. A charger has the ball. By the rule, it doesn't count, wrote San Diego fans in email. Officials strive for perfection. I failed miserably. Denver scored, went for two, and won 39-38. Congratulations, Chargers fans. Your team lost, but the paperwork is accurate. 192 days later, the owners made that kind of play reviewable. A coin toss took four days. A blown whistle took 192. Did he get in? Nobody could check. December 1998, and the NFL has no replay. Seattle leads the Jets 31-26, 20 seconds left. Vinny Testaverde dives, and the head linesman signals touchdown. There it is. The knee is down. The ball is down. No. Not even. Not even crossed. Whoa. Look at that pile. Can you see the ball? Neither could he. Jets 32, Seahawks 31. Seattle coach Dennis Erickson said the league's officiating director told him the linesman saw the helmet go across the line and thought it was the ball. Nine days later, a league committee voted down bringing replay back that season. Commissioner Paul Tagliabue. The disadvantages outweighed the advantages. The disadvantages of checking a touchdown. 101 days later, the owners voted 28-3 to bring replay back. It wasn't the only reason. It was one. Here's the thing about the NFL. Say the wrong thing about a ref, and you can get a fine. Blow a call that ends a season, and you get a statement. Pay for the whole thing, and you get a shrug. Here's the twist. The referee did exactly what the 2002 rulebook said. That's the problem. Foxborough, 2002, in a snowstorm. Oakland leads New England 13-10, late. Charles Woodson hits Tom Brady as he pulls the ball back and Oakland recovers the fumble. Referee Walt Coleman checks the replay. Incomplete pass. New England ties it, then wins in overtime. Frame one. The ball's still in his hand. By the book, that's a pass. Frame two. The ball comes out. The book says that doesn't matter. Woodson, years later. The owners threw the rule out. 29 to 1. Eleven years later. That's how long the NFL needed to dump a rule everybody could see was garbage. Oakland got it too late. The league never said Coleman got it wrong. Because he didn't. The book did. Five more that just missed. Dez Bryant, be honest, is that a catch? Yes, I don't care what the 2015 rule book said. Calvin Johnson, Taylor Decker, Steelers Chargers, Bottlegate. In 2012, the NFL locked out its real referees. Then, Monday Night Football showed America what that looked like. Green Bay leads Seattle 12 to seven, eight seconds left. Russell Wilson heaves it up. Golden Tate shoves Sam Shields, then he and MD Jennings both get hands on the ball. Touchdown. After a lengthy review, it stands. Fans named it the Fail Mary. Even the nickname sounds like a customer service ticket. His arms on Shields before the ball arrives. That's offensive pass interference. Both have the ball. A tie goes to the offense. The league said so itself. It should have been a penalty for offensive pass interference, which would have ended the game. Seahawks 14, Packers 12. Penalty missed. Result, final. There's that line again. Golden Tate gets away with one of the most blatant offensive pass interference calls I've ever seen. Aaron Rodgers. First of all, I've got to do something that the NFL is not going to do, and I have to apologize to the fans. About two days later, the league had a deal with its real referees. Funny how fast it moves once the whole country is watching. That freeze from the start? This is the play. No flag in an NFC Championship game. New Orleans, 2019. Tied at 20, under two minutes left, third and 10. Drew Brees throws to Tommy Lee Lewis, and Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman hits him as the ball arrives. The ball's in the air. He's already on him. That's pass interference. Now find the flag. Go ahead. We'll wait. What was that flag worth? First and goal, and a chance to run the clock down before kicking. Not a guaranteed win. A different ending. Instead, the Saints kicked with a minute 41 left, and the Rams won in overtime, 26-23. It was simple. They blew the call. They said it should never have not been a call. Saints owner Gayle Benson. It is undeniable that our team and fans were unfairly deprived of that opportunity. Notice who she put in that sentence. The fans. Ten days later, the commissioner's answer. Technology is not going to solve all those issues. The game is not officiated by robots. The league admitted it. The owners voted 31-1 to make pass interference reviewable. Then they let the fix die after a year. Classic NFL. Super Bowl XL, 2006. Steelers 21, Seahawks 10. Referee Bill Levy. Four disputed calls. A Seattle touchdown wiped out, a Pittsburgh touchdown upheld on replay, an 18-yard catch erased by a holding flag, and a low block flag on Matt Hasselbeck after his interception. A low block needs contact. Hasselbeck chases the man who picked him off. The AP said the replay showed none. The league's answer? The game was properly officiated. Four years later, Mike Pereira, who ran NFL officiating then, wrote that missed calls went against both teams, and Levy's calls did not decide the winner. Remember the referee I promised? In 2010, Levy spoke. His words, in 2010. I kicked two calls in the fourth quarter, and I impacted the game. We're playing in San Fran, away game, and he's our referee. And I'm out at pregame, and he comes running up to me right away, like with kind of like tears in his eyes, and he was just like, hey, I wasn't my best on your Super Bowl, and I apologize for not being my best. He didn't name the calls. He also said, I'll go to my grave wishing that I'd been better. The league said the game was properly officiated. The referee said he impacted it. Four years apart. Guess which one you believe. Blown calls are part of football. What makes you want to throw the remote is what comes after. The league kept the billions. The players risked the fines. You got, the result is final. If your system can explain the mistake on Monday but can't fix it on game day, you've built an excellent complaints department. Correct the obvious. Show the reason. Show the change. Which call still makes you mad? Tell me below. Come on, I mean that's absurd. Subscribe to First Sports. We'll keep watching the replay so you don't have to.