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Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sport
Jimmy Traina

J.J. Watt Has Become Important Voice in Holding NFL, Refs Accountable

NFL JJ Watt Stephen A Smith Football ESPN Kevin Harlan Troy Aikman Walt Anderson

1. The NFL has an officiating problem. This is not news. I've written about this many times in recent weeks.

However, it's one thing for a schlub like me, or fans, or even writers and bloggers to complain about ridiculous calls. 

But when a future Hall of Famer who was one of the more iconic NFL players for a decade repeatedly calls attention to the problem, it will have an impact.

Now that J.J. Watt's playing days for over and he's transitioning into media, working part-time for CBS's NFL Today and appearing weekly on The Pat McAfee Show, he doesn't have to hold back when it comes to criticizing the league. 

And Watt has been doing just that on his Twitter account. Often.

Some thoughts about all this.

Not only is Watt calling out terrible roughing-the-passer calls, but he's also focusing on the league taking players’ money, which you don’t usually hear about it. And you can bet that the NFL is far from thrilled every time they see Watt point out that the league is “stealing” money from players to his 5.6 million Twitter followers.

While I won't make the leap that Watt has the NFL rattled, I do think he has helped make the league a little rattled because all of a sudden the NFL is actually trying to fight back (in sad and lame way) against the blowback officials have gotten this season.

Two weeks ago, out of nowhere during the Raiders-Lions Monday Night Football game, NFL senior VP of officiating Walt Anderson popped on camera to defend an unintentional grounding call against Jared Goff. Troy Aikman thought there should’ve been a flag, and ESPN rules analyst John Parry said the refs blew the call. 

So someone in the NFL offices then made ESPN put Anderson on camera to proclaim that the refs were correct in making the noncall in a transparent and embarrassing moment.

Now cut to Thursday. On a random afternoon, the official NFL Football Operations Twitter account decided to post a four-tweet thread to explain the league’s nonsensical roughing-the-passer rule.

Normally, the NFL follows the old “never let them see you sweat” mantra, but it’s pretty clear the league is feeling the heat.

I’m not a huge conspiracy theory guy and I don’t think Watt is solely responsible for the NFL getting defensive when it comes to its officiating problem, but I also don’t think it’s merely a coincidence that the NFL is trying to fight back after a player of Watt’s stature is regularly calling out the league. 

Fans can only hope J.J. Watt and other important voices keep up the pressure so in the offseason the league makes some changes to the roughing-the-passer rule and takes some steps to improve the officiating. 

2. On a totally and completely unrelated note, not only is Watt a hero for calling out horrible calls, but he’s also a hero for taking this stand:

There are few things more ridiculous than when someone says, “Oh, my son is 13-and-a-half months old.”

3. For months, I have extensively pointed out how the Stephen A. Smith on the Stephen A. Smith Show podcast is not the Stephen A. Smith you see on ESPN. 

Allow me to do so once again.

4. Good Morning Football’s Kyle Brandt will be a guest on Monday’s edition of the ManningCast, so he gave us a hilarious all-Manning edition of Angry Runs on Friday. 

5. Here's some good news to take you into the weekend. The great Kevin Harlan, who is 63 years old, says he wants to keep working for at least 15 more years.

6. A brand-new episode of SI Media With Jimmy Traina dropped Thursday, and it features no guest. It's an all–“Traina Thoughts” edition with weekly contributor Sal Licata from WFAN Radio and SNY TV.

This week, I detail my struggles in trying to book a guest for this week’s podcast, we reminisce about the horrible experience they had when we took pictures with Larry David and we discuss the NFL’s prime-time schedule woes and flex-scheduling changes that need to happen. We also discuss Troy Aikman’s call of Chargers-Jets on Monday Night Football, including his repeated criticism of New York quarterback Zach Wilson, and we speculate about LeBron James’s recent streaming issues with YouTubeTV.

We also address tweets regarding whether sports can be enjoyed without gambling on them, an important trait for NFL play-by-play folks, the Apple TV remote control and much more.

You can listen to the podcast below or download it on Apple, Spotify and Google.

You can also watch SI Media With Jimmy Traina on YouTube.

7. On this week’s podcast, which you can listen to above, I explained in detail the importance of a football play-by-play person alerting viewers to a flag being thrown on punt returns, kick returns and long touchdowns, in general. So it was nice to get a bunch of tweets Thursday night about what I said on the podcast after this happened in the Panthers-Bears game.

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