High turnover, low morale: NFL’s officiating problems extend beyond the field

During a pregame meeting in 2022, Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin asked the officiating crew a question that had been bugging him.

So, who’s in charge here?

As one crew member recalls, Tomlin asked who in the league office was responsible for answering his questions about officiating decisions and who made the final decisions on replay reviews. “I have no idea,” the official told Tomlin that day. “I can’t tell you who’s the boss or who’s not. It’s been so secretive, and they’re just not very forthcoming.”

Tomlin shrugged. There was a game to play.

Last month, NFL teams received a long-awaited memo announcing structural changes to the league’s officiating department: two vice president hires and the addition of three former officials to the department’s staff, “as part of our ongoing Officiating Improvement Plan.” The memo, obtained by The Athletic, listed the new hires and described their qualifications but didn’t explain the plan’s details. In a separate statement announcing the hires to the public, Senior VP of officiating administration Perry Fewell referenced the plan but was light on specifics.

The NFL declined to comment on the record, but the “improvement plan” for the league’s officiating office is at least an admission that something is wrong, which comes as no surprise to those who have worked there.

“The officiating department is totally underfunded and understaffed,” said Scott Green, a former NFL official with 22 years experience, including nine as a referee, and the current executive director of the NFL Referee Association (NFLRA), the officials’ union.

“A nuisance to the NFL,” is how one former official describes it. “A necessary evil,” another said. “Whether it’s hubris, naivete, ignorance, there’s a belief that anybody can officiate with training.”

The league’s collective bargaining agreement with the NFLRA prevents current officials from talking to reporters, and three current referees declined to comment for this story. The Athletic spoke to 10 former officials, nine of whom worked for the NFL during most recent department leader Walt Anderson’s tenure. Many requested anonymity so they could speak without fear of retribution.

In April, the league announced that Anderson, who oversaw the department for the last four seasons, would vacate his role because his son Derek was hired as part of the 2024 class of officials. The NFL wanted to avoid a conflict of interest but didn’t say who would replace Anderson. A week before the start of the officials’ new league year on May 15, clubs were frustrated by the lack of information. So were the officials.

“We have a clinic the first week of June and we still don’t know who’s in charge,” Green said on May 7.

When the league finally announced the details of the restructure — the day after the officials’ season started — it was deja vu for many current and former department employees. The titles looked slightly different, but it was just another edition of what two ex-officials called a “revolving door.” This is the fifth time leadership has turned over since 2010, when Mike Pereira left and newly appointed NFL executive vice president of Football Operations Troy Vincent began presiding over the department. No one has lasted more than five years since.

“That’s when things really started to get funny up there,” a former official with experience dating back to Pereira’s tenure said. “We’re changing … every two or three years. By the third year, when (the guy’s) vision should really start to materialize, (he’s) gone.”

Morale among game officials is never going to be great — “We’re not partying on a yacht in the south of France,” former head of officiating Dean Blandino said. “This is hard.” Even so, former officials say morale sunk lower than the baseline negative under Anderson.

“They are not paying enough attention upstairs to what it takes to actually run an officiating department,” Green said.

There’s optimism about former umpire Ramon George and former replay official Mark Butterworth, the new VPs of training and replay, respectively. But there’s also skepticism as officials confront yet another shakeup.

“It’s the old smoke-and-mirrors trick with the league,” one former official said. “Where does the buck stop?”

Walt Anderson was never intended to run the roughly 140-person officiating department by himself.

When he was hired in 2020, the league divided the top job into three parts, each handled by a senior vice president. Al Riveron, a former referee, had been the sole leader in the prior regime, and it wasn’t going well, so he shifted to focus on replay. Fewell, a longtime NFL defensive coach, handled administration and communication with coaches. Anderson, a former referee, managed training and development. But Riveron left the NFL just before Anderson’s second season in 2021, and Russell Yurk, Riveron’s No. 2, took a leave of absence, so Anderson stepped into the gap.

That’s when coaches like Tomlin started to get confused about who was making the final decisions on replay. And with Fewell handling most of the communication with coaches despite not having an officiating background, clubs had trouble getting coherent explanations on decisions they disagreed with. When Yurk returned for the 2022 season, Anderson remained the primary replay decision-maker in addition to training and evaluating game officials, making him a de facto department head.

Officials are reviewed after each game by a team of graders at the league office. For the last three decades before Anderson took over, they received their final grades by the following Wednesday, which helped them learn and move on from the last game in time for the next one.

But former officials said Anderson started reviewing every game personally with the idea of improving consistency among crews. By last season, Green said officials weren’t getting their final grades until Friday or Saturday. One former official said he remembered receiving a downgrade from Anderson at 1:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning.

“Our guys are upset,” Green said. “You don’t want to be sitting in a pregame meeting on Saturday still wondering, ‘How did I do last week?’”

Anderson’s input often didn’t match the initial review other graders had finished by Wednesday, which confused some officials, particularly those without a lot of NFL experience. The changes could also be confusing for the department’s graders and trainers.

“The quality of their training is hampered,” one former official said. “You can do all this work and then it gets overridden by someone at the top. When a trainer says one thing to you on Tuesday and then you’re graded another way later in the week, that is conflicting messages that undermine the whole training.”

Anderson’s intentions may have been admirable, but the workload was massive, and, as one former official said, “It’s not sustainable because only Walt can do it.”

Those who have worked with Anderson described him as detail-oriented down to rote minutiae. Several former officials described his leadership style as “micromanaging.”

One former official remembers Anderson speaking to him in the headset during a game to tell him to get the chain gang member to move their chain a half inch out of the ‘white,’ the six-foot white rectangle just off the field where no players and coaches can stand. The chain crew is supposed to operate from just behind the white, but they’re rarely in perfect position.

“We’re worried about things like that in the middle of a game?” the former official said. “It’s so irrelevant.”

Anderson’s meticulous philosophy impacted morale. Former line judge Tom Symonette said crews went from receiving around four to five downgrades per game before Anderson to 15-20 downgrades per game with him. One former official said Anderson referenced video frames and used a stopwatch when evaluating decisions. Several former officials said his comments were harshly worded and at times, sarcastic, even for top-graded officials who’d qualified for playoff assignments.

“After about Week 4 or 5, I stopped reading them because they just made morale really bad,” said one former official with multiple playoff assignments.

Officiating teams are constantly criticized by fans, coaches, players and media, so when more criticism comes from inside the officiating department, it can feel like overkill. “The bedside manner has to be more positive,” Blandino said. “I always felt you can tell somebody they made a mistake but have them feel good about it.” (Editor’s note: Blandino was a freelance writer for The Athletic in 2017.)

NFL game officials aren’t full-time employees, and many are also successful business executives, some with their own companies. Anderson’s communication style was unlike what they experienced in their civilian jobs.

“Walt is just a straight-talker,” said one former official. “He is not about trying to make it soft or fluffy. In a business sense, he would struggle if he was working for me on my executive team.”

Walt Anderson spent over 20 years as an NFL game official before being promoted to the league office in 2020. (Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)

Anderson also implemented the biggest change in officiating mechanics — the way officials move on the field, where they stand to get the best view and how they work in concert to cover multiple angles — since Art McNally developed them in the 1970s.

In his first year, Anderson introduced “Move With Purpose,” a new philosophy developed with a neuro-ophthalmologist that instructed officials to remain as stationary as possible during a play. Physical movement decreases visual accuracy, so by standing still, Anderson taught officials they would be better positioned to see a play’s “mesh points,” crucial moments like when a ballcarrier’s knee goes down.

It made sense in theory, but former officials say that in practice, the change made them worse at their roles — and even could be dangerous. Officials agreed that moving during key moments isn’t optimal for seeing clearly, but they say they’ve trained for years to slow themselves down at just the right moment.

“Would you rather have 85 percent of the view that you need, or 100 percent of three views you don’t need?” one former official said.

For back judges, the deepest officials on the field, the change meant giving up goal line coverage and allowing pass plays to go by them. Instead of backpedaling to keep the play in front of them, they were instructed to freeze.

For officials on the line of scrimmage, it meant standing still while players barreled towards them. Line judges used to move into the backfield if a play was headed towards the sideline to watch the play from behind and stay safe. But Anderson told officials to stay where they were and step backward to avoid contact. Several were hurt, including a down judge who missed the remainder of the 2023 season after getting hit in Week 1.

“We were sitting ducks,” one former line judge said.

Line-of-scrimmage officials used to move with the ball carrier to get an accurate spot. Move with Purpose meant line judges could no longer follow, so they had to rule on a spot from several yards behind the play, which five former LOS officials said was much harder.

“There were a lot of missed calls because people were out of position,” a veteran official said. “I need to get up there to see if there’s a hold in front of the play. You can’t see it from 8 yards behind the play. Or if there’s a facemask up there, how the hell am I supposed to see that?”

“You see a lot of deeper plays where the official is just too far behind the play to really have an ability to effectively officiate that play,” Blandino said.

“There’s always been mechanics that guys liked and didn’t like,” retired NFL back judge Keith Ferguson said, but some veteran officials had a hard time adjusting. Several said they made uncharacteristic mistakes and received the worst grades of their careers in 2020. Even when they made the right decision, Anderson downgraded them if they moved incorrectly.

“I was having to remind myself, OK, don’t move,” one veteran official said. “I was thinking about mechanics as opposed to watching the play.”

Another former official said his grader told him he was in the top three for correct calls at his position, but he kept getting downgraded because he couldn’t reprogram his muscle memory. “Doesn’t it matter that you get it right on the field?” he said he asked his grader. “And he told me, ‘Well, apparently not anymore.’”

“I couldn’t relax,” Symonette said. “What made me successful my first 15 years did not make me successful anymore.”

Symonette found himself out of the league because of it. He had been an accomplished official with 10 playoff assignments, including Super Bowl XLVIII, with his last postseason assignment in 2017. After the frustrating 2020 season, he put in his four-year retirement notice. When the league office got his notice, he said Anderson let him go right away.

Every head of officiating tweaks mechanics to some degree, but former officials said Anderson’s felt more drastic and were rushed into practice. When Blandino was in charge, he had a committee of officials meet to discuss mechanics and decide which needed updating. Several former officials said they didn’t learn about Anderson’s changes until they got comments or downgrades about their movement during the season.

Perhaps the philosophy’s biggest flaw was its rigidity. When they’d talked about mechanics under previous leadership, the conversations left room for practicing judgment, a skill officials develop over years of game experience. Under Move with Purpose, there was no room for situation-based decisions.

“Officiating went backward 25 years because of those mechanics,” one former official said.

NFL coaches, stop reading here.

This season, an abnormally high number of inexperienced officials will take the field: 27 will have three years or less, and a third of the 120 officials have five years or less. Twelve officials retired after 2022 (every departure is characterized as a retirement), and 10 officials retired after the 2021 season, just the second time that 10 or more officials left in back-to-back years.

Most officials agree that it takes about five years to become proficient at the NFL level.

“There’s been a big turnover,” Ferguson, the former back judge, said. “It’s going to take time to get guys up to speed because they’ve lost a lot of good officials.”

A 20-year vet, Ferguson left the ranks after the 2022 season, and he said when he retired he probably hadn’t met at least half of the officials. “It used to be that every crew had at least four or five experienced officials that they put you around,” he said. “Now you may only have one or maybe two experienced officials in there.”

Another former official said when he got into the league around 20 years ago, most crews had one official that was “scratchy” or not up to snuff, but it would be unusual for a crew to have two. A current official sent him the 2024 crew assignment list and after reviewing it, he said, “now you can’t find a crew that has four strong officials.”

The turnover and inexperience of today’s NFL officials can be traced all the way down to the high school level. Bill Topp, president of the National Association of Sports Officials, said that after the pandemic, state associations and other national organizations reported a 25 to 33 percent drop in the number of high school officials. For a sport like football, with a handful games and limited reps per season, that drop has had a huge impact on the quality and training of new officials.

“How fast can we get them ready?” Topp said. “In the old days, you had to work the first few seasons of youth and freshman football, then JV, and now we have first-year officials getting varsity games immediately because the need is so great.

“The reality is we are taking more assignment chances than we ever have. We’re putting people on games that we believe aren’t quite ready yet, but the numbers are forcing it.”

The inexperience at the high school level has created a mess in college. Symonette has been the coordinator of officials for the Division II Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference since 2014 and has seen a steady decline in the football IQ and overall preparedness of officials coming from high school. “I’ve got to retrain them and untangle everything they’ve learned,” he said.

“If you go down to the lower ranks, a lot of people don’t want to officiate anymore,” Ferguson said. “When I was hired, you had to have at least 10 years of a college officiating background. That’s gone.”

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NFL officials have an annual clinic in June, then work training camps and joint practices to get reps before the season. College officials in the developmental pipeline work preseason games with veteran crews. But the individual training available to officials during the season is self-directed, according to one former official who sent a few plays each week to a trainer who would tell him, yes, that’s a foul, or no, it wasn’t.

The expansion of replay assistance since 2021 means that officials don’t have to get the spot of the ball right on the first try or keep the time perfectly. Replay officials regularly tinker with the game clock and spots during games, instructing crews to move the ball a half yard forward or backward, in part because the Move With Purpose mechanics have made officials less accurate on forward progress.

Anderson’s mechanics, paired with inexperienced officials, have expedited the need for more replay assistance to save the day. Pereira said he’s noticed officials are much more tentative. “Much of the power is being taken away from the officials on the field,” he said.

Several former officials say that replay has become a crutch for many crews and a reason that development doesn’t feel like a priority. Blandino likens it to driving a car with a backup camera. When he drives without one, he can barely remember how to get out of the driveway.

“If I know that if I don’t drop a beanbag in the right spot, (it’s OK) because replay is going to correct it, then I’m not going to focus on the mechanics that I’ve been doing forever,” Blandino said. “And that means that my overall level of officiating is going to decline.”

Some former officials worry that the expansion of replay assistance has become a crutch for inexperienced crews. (Adam Hunger / Getty Images)

Instead of hiring another Senior VP to replace Anderson and co-chair the department with Fewell, the league posted two lower-level VP jobs overseeing officiating training and development and replay training and development. Both positions, which would report to Fewell, listed a salary range of $215,000-315,000.

That range provided more fodder for the notion that the league doesn’t spend enough to staff the department — or to compete with the broadcast networks that poached Pereira and Blandino, the favorites among officials who worked under six different leaders over the last 20 years.

“It’s the second most important job in the league,” Pereira said. “I don’t give anybody beyond the commissioner a more important position than the head of officiating. You are dealing with the game and with the coaches and the GMs. If they trust you, you are dealing with the media. You are the face.”

“Put it in the top 10 (of league office salaries),” Blandino said. “It’s not even in the ballpark. When the commissioner is making $50 or $60 million, the delta is the Grand Canyon-plus.”

The league had to sweeten the offer a bit to get George to come off the field, according to Green, who said George told him that he took the job for more than the posted salary. Multiple former officials said the former umpire also will not relocate to New York from his home in Jacksonville, Fla. An NFL spokesperson declined to comment on officiating personnel decisions.

Some former officials worry that George, who declined to comment for this story, might plan to return to on-field officiating after a couple of years — like line judge Carl Johnson did after leading the department from 2010-12 — and the turnover will continue.

Pereira said he’s encouraged by what he’s heard about George from some of the trainers. “He is listening,” Perreria said. “He is not dictating what they are going to do. He made a comment like, ‘I am an umpire. I haven’t worked deep, you have to educate me.’ That kind of approach is a positive approach.”

In another lifetime, there was consistency in the department. McNally, the godfather of NFL officiating, led the group for 23 years, then Jerry Seeman for 10 years, then Pereira for nine. “When I got the job after Jerry, it was a harder job,” Pereira said. “And when people got the job after me, it was a harder job.”

In 2010, Pereira left for Fox Sports to become the first-ever network rules analyst. After Blandino made the same move following the 2016 season, Pereira said he saw “the spiral starting” and urged members of the competition committee to hire Blandino back.

Blandino said he talked with the league about returning a couple of years ago. The conversations progressed, and he outlined a reimagined structure for the department as well as what he was looking for in compensation. He said he loved working for the league, but during those talks, it was clear to him he wouldn’t be able to hire who he wanted to — or get paid enough to do it.

Most officiating observers agree that the league’s new structure looks good on paper. But will George and Butterworth be empowered to make the changes they want to?

“We talk about this Officiating Improvement Plan, but OK, what is it?” Blandino said. “How are we going to get better? How are we going to quantify that? What are the steps?”

A person who attended the annual clinic in Dallas this week said no additional specifics were provided about the improvement plan and that leadership had no information about the grading process for the 2024 season.

Anderson is still working in the department as a rules analyst and club communications liaison. When the officials met this week, he presented reports on rule changes that came from competition committee meetings. The person in attendance said officials were relieved to learn that the department would be reversing the Move With Purpose mechanics.

Green attended the clinic and said that George told him they’d be going back to the old ways. “What most officials are more comfortable using,” Green said. “They are going to let guys run.”

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photo: Andy Lewis / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)