The neverending, disastrous saga of the replacement referees somehow took another hit, just when you think things couldn't get worse after Monday night's surreal game between the Broncos and Falcons. During an interview on Monday, LeSean McCoy of the Eagles had some choice words about the referees from the Eagles' 24-23 win over the Ravens.
"They're like fans, kind of though,” McCoy said. “I'll be honest, they're like fans. One of the refs was talking about his fantasy team, like ‘McCoy, come on, I need you for my fantasy,' ahhh, what?!"
"During the game, they made like a bad call or something, the ref, and I see Ray Lewis like pump his chest up, trying to scare him,” McCoy said. "Don't you know [the ref] started stuttering? I'm like ‘what's this?!'"
If this isn't going to add even more fuel to the fire for the NFL to settle with the referees' union, I'm not sure what will end up being the breaking point. Here you have one of the league's marquee players coming out and saying that the replacement officials are fans (as we learned on Sunday with the case of Brian Stropolo), and that players could essentially intimidate them into throwing/picking up flags.
With the regular officials, when there's a bad call, the initial assumption is that they just blew it, and that it happens. With the replacement officials, people are now going to start wondering if there's more to it than just incompetence. And that's not a situation that any sport wants to fall into with their officiating.
