Conference Championship crews reaction thread

[FredFan7]

Black hats when we get them.

[zebrablog]

Black hats are posted

[FredFan7]

www.footballzebras.com/2024/01/smith-and-blakeman-are-conference-championship-referees/

[russ]

Interesting that Flemming gets a CC and a Divisional. Happened 2 years ago with Perlman and in 2019 with Eugene Hall and Perry Paganelli.

Congrats to Smith on his first CC as a Referee, he worked in 2017 as an Umpire, and to Jeffries, Hill, Bell, Jones and Flemming for their first CC. Bell and Flemming get their in just their 4th season and Jones in his 5th.

This is now the 7th season in a row that Blakeman has been in the Divisional Round or better. Vinovih is the only other Referee that can say that. While Cheffers, Torbert, Hussey and Hochuli have been most of the time only Vinovich (10 years in a row for him) and Blakeman have been at that level of elite. It still is shocking that Blakeman only has one Super Bowl with how consistently he gets the top spots.

Phillips is the next Eugene Hall. CC or Super Bowl in 4 of the last 5 seasons. To have 3 CC's and 1 Super Bowl in just 8 seasons is extremely impressive. This also McKenzie's 4th CC and second in a row. Also surprising he has only had 1 Super Bowl. Jeff Seeman is in his 4th straight CC and 5th overall, Rusty Baynes is also in his 4th CC. Despite Dino Paganelli having worked 3 Super Bowl's, still am not sure how he qualified last year when he wasn't in the CC the year before, this is only his 3rd CC and first since 2014.

Congrats to everyone who was selected. If it is like in years past I would expect to get the Super Bowl crew either tomorrow or Wednesday.

[ryguy80]

Jan 22, 2024 15:04:15 GMT -5 russ said:

While Cheffers, Torbert, Hussey and Hochuli have been most of the time only Vinovich (10 years in a row for him) and Blakeman have been at that level of elite.

If Vinovich gets the SB assignment, that will 8 postseasons in the last 10 that he has received a conference championship or Super Bowl assignment, if my info is correct. Pretty rarefied air.

[zebrablog]

It appears that the situation with FJ this season is that there were 2 that graded out, 2 that are rookies, and 1 injured. With the additional wild card games, a double-up was inevitable.

[russ]

Jan 22, 2024 18:52:31 GMT -5 zebrablog said:

It appears that the situation with FJ this season is that there were 2 that graded out, 2 that are rookies, and 1 injured. With the additional wild card games, a double-up was inevitable.

Indeed. With 12 spots up for grabs and only 17 at each position there are not many who will not work. In the case of FJ with Terry Brown injured and 2 rookies Ledet and Petty that left only 14 eligible FJ’s for 12 spots. Anderson most likely deemed that none of the three between Patterson, Prioleau and Santi had a good enough season to even work a Wild Card Game.

This is why with 12 games before the Super Bowl to Officiate I would go back to the Riveron way of doing things and have the CC Officials come from the Wild Card Round. You are still getting 10/17 on the field at each position which is more than half. But having 12/17 is way too many, especially in years like the last two where there are a lot of rookies.

[mike]

I don’t mind going 12/17 if they scored high enough. This way officials can get experience in playoff games. Don’t want an official to be first time eligible for Tier 1 assignment due to alternate assignments and you find out that the lights were too bright.

[zebrablog]

I think they don't want to box themselves in with numbers, that X number of officials must be slotted in this manner. Just looking at the grades alone, you can have an effective tie that is essentially broken because one official had 3 more plays than another.

Everyone I speak with says they don't know what the secret sauce is, but it used to be 3 tiers and now it is 5. At either end of the scale you have...

I. Championship Tier. Obviously your top 3 are here, but there may be as many as 5 (more with ties?). Probably someone gets a Divisional as a backup Super Bowl official in case of a meltdown or an injury. I think at the referee position Shawn Hochuli was that backup white hat. Some positions didn't have that backup this year.

Skipping down to....
V. Out of playoffs. I think this tier was specifically created because there was a collection of alternate-qualifying officials and graded-out officials in the same tier. This specifically separates below-standard officials into its own grouping. The CBA gave some extra leverage to the officiating department to dismiss those officials, and this is probably the mechanism that effects that process.

That leaves Tiers II, III, and IV for leveling personnel in between those extremes. I'm not sure that a DIV assignment is always considered to be higher than WC. If I'm assigning, I might consider putting a Tier II official in a 5 vs. 4 Wild Card, or even a 2 vs. 7 that is an intense rivalry. I may have this wrong, but I suggest that because I hear the assignments are "very curious selections" and I'm thinking that's based partially on a strict WC/DIV hierarchy. Also, your Tier II officials would be the first ones to get a second assignment as an alternate.

I think your Tier III fills in the rest of the on-field positions and might overflow into single alternate assignments. And Tier IV (again, guessing) would be your pool of alternates. Tier IV is not a death-knell on its own, I think. These should be average officials (not on a 1 through 17 scale, but average in terms of performance). We have to think that this group is a playoff-qualified group, because they are expected to enter a playoff game if needed. So an official spinning their wheels in Tier IV every year might be talking to the boss, but I don't think it necessarily puts them in the hot seat. With the number of games and the increase in the alternate slots, there should be no reason why a Tier IV should be, as we say, ice fishing with Bernie Kukar.

I believe that Tier V exists because under the 3-tiered system, they might throw an alternate assignment to an official just because they are limited in personnel due to injured and rookie officials. Walt showed a willingness to put a Tier I or II official into a rare double assignment rather than bump the next one in the list to an alternate.

Again, pure spitballing here, but it seems that four years into the tenure of SVP66, we can start to establish these patterns. 

[mike]

I like the idea of not boxing themselves in as long as they have 10 qualified officials at a position. If you can get to 12, great.

[russ]

Ben, I think you have great points here. I would say that this year especially there didn't seem to be a ton of difference between Divisional and Wild Card, they really wanted Referee's to work with as many qualified regular season crew members as possible. It was like the Pereiara days except with a tier system so that the tier 3 or 4 Officials didn't get undeserved Playoff Assignments. I like this change because it just makes the crews more cohesive. In years past it definitely more of a mish mash of Officials on each playoff game. Like for instance I highly doubt if this was last year that Hussey would have had 5 other members of his regular season crew with him. That just wasn't something that happened. We probably would have seen a few of them on Wild Card Games while the others were on Divisional or CC Games.

On another note it seems that there were very few tier 5 Officials this year, much fewer than previous year.

R- Blake, Eck (but Eck might not have even been tier 5, First year Referees are eligible for alternate assignments but rarely get them)
U- None
DJ- None
LJ- Bolinger, Chaka (missed weeks 16 & 17 and bye week in week 18, might have been injured), DeLorenzo
SJ- None
BJ- None
FJ- Santi, Prioleau

[zebrablog]

Just to point out that first-year referees are not playoff qualified, not even an alternate. Just quickly scanned back and it happened most recently in 2015, twice in 2014, and 2008, before I stopped looking. So, the tail end of the last CBA and the current one, there hasn't been a rookie white hat as an alternate. They even resisted doing that when they had a record of 4 new white hats.

Chaka was definitely out in Week 18, because she was the only LJ available to fill in for Brett Bergman and instead they pulled the down judge. I'm told she had an ankle injury, although it could be more than that. I haven't been able to nail that down.

Terry Brown was also injured late in the season, so he was rightly omitted from your list.

But other than Eck, that is an accurate rundown of the ice fishers this year.

[mike]

I think the NFL needlessly rushed Blake and I hope it doesn’t adversely impact future candidates. I think he was a swing FJ during COVID, moved to U, and then promoted to Referee. I think he would have been better served doing what they have done with Cruse, Moore, etc. getting him experience as the right hand man for a few years with a top Referee.

[ryguy80]

Jan 25, 2024 18:05:29 GMT -5 mike said:

I think the NFL needlessly rushed Blake and I hope it doesn’t adversely impact future candidates. I think he was a swing FJ during COVID, moved to U, and then promoted to Referee. I think he would have been better served doing what they have done with Cruse, Moore, etc. getting him experience as the right hand man for a few years with a top Referee.

I always go back to Jerry Markbreit’s story of how he turned down the NFL’s original offer in order to gain more college experience as a R and how he believed coming into the NFL later helped with his success. I think there is some truth to being rushed too quickly through the ranks.

[russ]

Jan 25, 2024 18:05:29 GMT -5 mike said:

I think the NFL needlessly rushed Blake and I hope it doesn’t adversely impact future candidates. I think he was a swing FJ during COVID, moved to U, and then promoted to Referee. I think he would have been better served doing what they have done with Cruse, Moore, etc. getting him experience as the right hand man for a few years with a top Referee.

Absolutely agree, he has not been very impressive his first 2 seasons. They gave him quite a few high profile assignments this year probably to see how he would fair in them and clearly he had a tough time. They really should have promoted Willard
when Blake was promoted. And honestly he wasn't all that impressive in the ACC either. He spent 3 seasons as an ACC Referee and only worked 1 Bowl Game, and ACC will give Bowl Games to first year Officials, and that Bowl Game was the Liberty Bowl which was the lowest ranked Bowl Game the ACC had that year. So he was at best a middle of the pack Referee in the ACC when he was hired.

It used to be a requirement, whether official or just in practice, that you work a Playoff Game before you could be promoted to Referee. Both Blake and Clark weren't and have both struggled since becoming Referees, although Clark has at least been an alternate all 3 years he was eligible as a Referee. That really should be the minimum requirement though. It is not a guarantee that you will be a good or bad Referee but it helps to have important games under your belt before taking the lead.

Now we have 6 legitimate candidates for the Referee spot and 4 of them have already worked playoffs, Campbell and Carter were first year so they obviously didn't. They are in really good shape for the future but seemed to push Blake too hard at the beginning and what you are getting is someone who is not ready for the level he is at. Not to say he can't get better.

Blake was indeed a FJ in 2020 but he was on Clark's crew the whole year. I know 2020 was a weird season but you hardly ever see first year Officials on first year Referee's crews. Funny enough current Referee Alan Eck was also on Clark's crew in 2020.