First off, what are you up to now?
Well, I was the son of an NFL referee and now my son is an NFL referee. I’m retired now from my time as a referee and I used to own a mobile imaging company I sold off to Appollo Management – to Josh Harris who now owns the Washington Commanders. We got close over the years.
I also still train college officials for the Big 10 and MidAmerican Conference. Bill Carroll is the Supervisor of Officials there and asked me to come in and lend my expertise on how to watch film and understand the game itself better.
Refereeing NFL games has been a family affair for you – father, brother and now your son both have all done so. What did your father show you that helped you most?
People laugh when I say it, but I got involved in the NFL when I was in sixth grade – in 1966. My dad would bring me to some games – and when he watched games after Monday Night Football he’d call guys like Jim Tunney and talk about the games and I’d listen in. That taught me how to watch games through the eyes of an official versus the eyes of a fan. “Did you see that right tackle hold?” That kind of stuff that taught me what to watch out for.
We grew up on the North Side. My father and Tom Forrester coached a quarterback in high school named J.C. Stone. J.C. went to Vietnam, came back and decided to go back again and was killed two months later. We were close to J.C. – my father and Tom were able to get a football field named after him in North Park- J.C. Stone Field. They played a lot of high school games there and the Ironmen used to play there sometimes too. When I was at RMU I ran the clock at J.C. Stone Field and talked to a lot of the officials then.
What did they say to you?
They told me I should become an official. My dad never said a word to me about being an official – but they got me into it.
After that I started officiating high school games – then when the USFL came to Pittsburgh I officiated some USFL games. Then I did some Arena Football before the NFL hired me in 1991. That was the advent of the World Football League too that year -so they had the nine new officials they hired to work the World League first then come back and work the NFL. We were away 40 weekends that year – we officiated a lot of games in a very compressed time.
What does training look like for officials- what was that process like for you before and during your career? How much on the job versus the game of football?
99% of the training was on the art of officiating – not on the game. That’s what I do now to help officials. When you watched Mario Lemieux or Wayne Gretzky play, what made them great is that they skated to where they puck was going – not where it was at. I take that same approach with officials. If you know what’s going to happen in a play that makes you much better as an official.
For example, if a receiver goes in motion and a defensive back follows them, you know it’s man coverage. As an official, that helps you understand what to watch out for. As the receiver releases from the line of scrimmage, is the defensive back holding them if they get beaten off of the line? That helps you understand what to pay attention to. If you see an offensive line grouping and understand that a team likes to pull, for example, you know where to look for potential holding calls.
By the end of my career I had watched so much film that when I was working a game it was like watching a bunch of still photos. That’s how much the game had slowed down for me after studying film and understanding the game. But little of that is taught now.
How do you review film as an official?
It varies from A to Z. There are 32 NFL quarterbacks and what separates the top from the bottom is often how they break the game down. That’s the same with officials.
Luke Kuechly was the smartest player I ever saw play in the NFL. He was the Gretzky or Lemieux of football. In June and July officials would go work with teams at training camp and I requested to go to Carolina. When they asked me why I said it was because I wanted to spend time with Kuechly and learn how he does it.
I went to the film room and was on the field with him. I spent probably eight hours with him. When we got to the linebacker room I asked him about a play he made the year before. He ran across his left inside linebacker’s face – Thomas Davis – and hit the B-Gap and tackled the running back for a two-yard loss. I wanted to know how he did it.
Well, he told me he wasn’t the biggest, fastest or strongest guy, so he knew he had to watch more film and learn tendencies. He said he was a film nerd. He said on that play – it was I think second and four – he knew their tendencies. What plays they liked to run on certain downs and distances – and they liked to run in that situation. He saw the offensive huddle and it wasn’t a long playcall – he knew pass plays took longer to call – they are more complicated to call in from the sideline and for quarterbacks then to relay to the players. So he knew it was a run. Then he looked at the running back set up. He watched his eyes and saw them briefly glance over to the right – where Kuechly knew they liked to run. He said right then he knew he had them. But – he couldn’t tip them off. He couldn’t tell Davis and tip his hand and he knew Davis wasn’t going to know the playcall. So as soon as he saw the center put pressure on the ball and saw the ball move he ran past Davis and hit the gap and made the play. What’s funny is when I mentioned the play Kuechly knew exactly what play I was talking about.
So – the point is officials have to study film and know what to expect as well. They need to raise their game the same way.
What is the review process like for an official?
There are graders in the league whose job it is to work with the refs and grade their calls. They do that after every game.
Do you like the idea of full-time refs – why/why not?
There hasn’t been a game yet where officials left by the third quarter. They are already full time. Every week they are breaking down film, taking tests. They don’t get paid a lot so they have other full-time jobs they are sacrificing time at to be officials. There just aren’t enough games to warrant full-time officials.
You see the backlash on referees today – especially as a former NFLRA union president, in your opinion what can the NFL do to help make things simpler/easier? Are the rules too complex or too subjective? What do you think can or should change?
The human eye sees what – 24 frames per second? We can’t see better than the technology that exists today – today cameras shoot at hundreds of frames per second. The clarity and angles a camera offers – with the ability to run replays two seconds after a play – it makes analog TV look like seeing underwater without a SCUBA mask. The technology is so good now and TV translates better on TV than any other sport.
So, the chasm between what we see and what you see on TV just gets bigger and bigger as the technology continues to improve. On TV you can see a football hitting the tip of blade of grass – you can’t see that as a human.
It all comes back to being ahead of the play. People watch TV and use stop action and ask how an official could have missed a call. But it all happens in a nanosecond. It will just continue to deteriorate how officials look to fans. It’s all the more important that officials do all they can to learn the answers before the questions are given – to understand the game enough to put them in the best positions to make calls. Just to give them a chance.
Things like astroturf have helped officials – those little rubber pellets kick up and create “rooster tails” that help us make calls. So that has helped a bit. But it’s tough.
Who are the coaches and players that are most memorable from a difficulty or even humor standpoint?
The guys I enjoyed working with were the ones who knew the rules – who knew what they were doing. Not the ones that screamed and yelled. People would ask me what Don Shula was like on the sidelines. All I saw him do was clap his hands and yell “Come on Danny!”
Belichick knew everything about everything. A good story – before the Rams Super Bowl he asked me before the game if the roof was going to be open or closed. It was shaped like a shutter and opened and closed – there was a jet flyover so I wasn’t sure. I asked and I was told they were closing the roof so I told him. He asked me “When are they closing it?” I told him I assumed before kickoff. He asked me to go back again and ask – he wanted to know he said because there’s a draft that comes from the far end when it’s open and creates a four mph wind. He said he knew it wasn’t a lot – but four mph was still four mph…
Mike McCarthy was a great guy – a man’s man. A Pittsburgh guy! The bad coaches – without naming names – they were the ones who talked down to you. They are under pressure I know – so are we. But I’m not calling them assholes.
Any good Steelers stories?
I never worked Steelers games. It was my call, but because I was from Pittsburgh I opted out of those. I never needed someone turfing my lawn!
What’s the biggest misperception you think fans have of NFL officiating?
I think many people feel it’s all fixed – I hear that a lot. When I hear it from someone I ask “How much did you lose?”
There is way too much access to gambling though. It’s drilled into us every year as officials – we have two-hour conversations with NFL security people. We’re not allowed to go to Atlantic City or Las Vegas unless it was for Raiders games – and then we stayed at the one hotel that didn’t have a casino. We’re not allowed to bet anything at all – not even pools. It’s very strict. But then you have half of the gambling sites advertising in the stadiums and on TV and in-stadium betting. How do you police it when you embrace it? But I believe the public thinks games are fixed because they lost bets!