With a dismal 0-2 start to the 2015 season already in the books, we look ahead to this week’s match up to see if Zebras, Bengals and Ravens can all coexist.
Officiating Crew: Walt Anderson (referee), Butch Hannah (umpire), Steve Stelljes (head linesman), Eugene Hall (field judge), Laird Hayes (side judge), Todd Drukop (back judge).
First and foremost, let me wish Walt Anderson a happy anniversary, as 2015 marks the 20th year Anderson has been officiating in the NFL.
Walt has quite the resume to his name in his 20 years of service in the league, including post season appearances for every year of eligibility, and an appearance as the line judge in a certain Super Bowl some folks around here might remember.
Speaking of tenure, the broadcast team from Week 2’s Thursday night match up between the Chiefs and Broncos, a game officiated by Walt Anderson’s crew, threw in a nice little Snapple fact: the collective experience of Walt Anderson’s crew totals 102 years of league experience. That experience far exceeds that of any other officiating crew in the NFL this year.
So does this experience translate to an efficient, by-the-books officiating crew?
As always, let’s go back to the last time the Ravens and Walt Anderson shared the field, which took place in Novermber of 2014 at home against the Chargers. The game was a heartbreaker (something the Ravens have a knack for in 2015) that the Ravens lost 34-33 after leading for the first 59:22 of the game.
Overall, the game included 22 penalties for a whopping 189 yards, with 14 of those penalties (totaling 98 yards) coming against Baltimore. Here’s how the penalties were broken down by type:
You’ll notice the resounding number of defensive penalties (15) compared to the offense (7), with an apparent eye for contact downfield, given the 10 penalties in that game were for some variation of defensive contact beyond 5 yards.
While this may be considered a major concern for the Ravens secondary, especially after Derek Carr shredded the the group last week (coupled will Will Hill’s excessive holding call), the silver lining that I can find is the turnover of officials within the crew. This season, Anderson’s crew has a new back judge, side judge, and umpire.
To use this Ravens-Chargers game last season as a litmus test compared to this season’s crew, I looked at the 1st two games officiated by Anderson’s group. Here’s a similar breakdown of penalties in those 2 games:
While there’s still a decent amount of penalties being called, they are much more evenly distributed, as opposed to a heavy focus on defense, which we saw in the Ravens/Chargers game last year. Based on that comparison alone, I think it’s fair to assume Walt’s new crew is on their game much more than the old bunch.
While Anderson’s group passes the test for total penalties, I needed to verify their efficiency when it came to non-calls where penalties should be made, as well as potential missed calls that were overturned via coaches challenges. To do so, I went to the tape of last week’s match up between the Broncos and the Chiefs.
Walt Anderson’s crew called an impressively fair game. Every call made was 100% legitimate, and every non-call that had Chiefs fans booing was a justifiable time to swallow their whistles.
Of course you’ll see some hand-jabbing on downfield routes from both the defender and the receiver, but the officials seemed to be letting most of that go, unless it was a blatant hold or pass interference.
The other major key I picked up watching Walt Anderson’s crew is that in no way did they take control of the game like Morelli’s crew did last week with certain calls in key situations. The whistles remained in the pockets at crucial points in this particular game, unless the potential fouls were blatant. In a game that came down to a fumble recovery for a touchdown, nobody walked away from that game thinking ‘the refs gave this one away.’
Anderson’s crew effectively made a relatively quick call on a play that may have stumped some fans, and possibly officials as well.
With 11 minutes left in the 2nd quarter and Kansas City with the ball, Broncos LB Von Miller reacted to a false start by Chiefs LT Jah Reid, then continued into the backfield to knock down QB Alex Smith. In the head of many, you would think a flag on each side would result in offsetting penalties, or possibly just encroachment on the D if they didn’t see the jump by Reid. Instead, Walt Anderson quickly mic’d up and announced that by rule, the false start penalty would be negated, while the unnecessary roughness penalty on Denver would be enforced.
Questioning the rule, the broadcast team turned to former official Mike Carey, who confirmed that the 15 yard penalty will always supersede a pre-snap penalty in these instances, so the call was correct.
Simply put: Walt nailed it.
A phrase I hope to repeat Sunday, as opposed to my usual verbal assault on the refs of “Are you kidding me?”
