NFL 2012 Season Week 4 Picks

Like every good sports fan, I will acknowledge and maybe even cheer a little when the refs get announced before the game on Sunday. And then once the game starts, like every good sports fan, I will boo at the first missed call, because that's just part of the game. But at least I'll be comforted by knowing I'm booing a real ref.

In my opinion, though, the league will take some time to recover from not just what happend Monday Night, but what went on the first 3 weeks of this season. A small part of the character of those at the top has been exposed. That wound won't heal overnight.

Oh, it might be worth noting that 2 days after the call heard round the world the league frantically came to a 3am agreement to bring the refs back. Lost in that shuffle is that there are accounts of tens of thousands of Packer fans calling the league office voicing their complaints. When 70,000 "owners" call your office, you act. I can take some consolation from the ending of Monday's game if the Packers are essentially responsible for saving the league and restoring order to the force universe.

And things were going so swimmingly for the replacement refs prior to that call too.

The straw that broke the camel's back? Besides, Wisconsinites love to protest things. Had this happened to the Miami Dolphins, the fans would have just gone back to the beach the next day.

There probably would have been a "simultaneous pokey" written.

Gene Steratore is from Pittsburgh.

I don't get it.

Well then you just don't listen to enough South Florida AM sports radio recordings from 2 years ago.

11-3.....not a winner, but a nice stat!!!! E-A-G-L-E-S....EAGLES!!!!!!!!!!

Is offensive pass intereference in the endzone a thing this year? That can still be called, right? Just wondering.

I cnt believe eagles beat the giants

I'm told by someone who was at the game that after the Saints fumbled on that Kickoff return in the 4th qtr the Packers the security at the game was called onto the field to guard any possible entrances to the field. Nothing happened, but I think the local authorities knew that a high emotional fanbase (sprinkled in with the usual amount of drunk guys that attend any football game) can only take getting hosed so many times in a short span. (it didn't help that the Packers were out of challenges, but you hope that you wouldn't need to challenge a play that was 1000 times more obvious than even the Fail Mary from last week). The chants of "BS" (but the whole word, not just initials) were about as clear and articulated as any chant you'll ever hear. And according to my source, there was virtually no positive acknowledgement of the refs as the media attempted to play up. The fans (at least the Packer fans) don't seem to care who was in stripes.

On the other side of that coin, other than the calls themselves, the flow of the game was irreplaceable. What was lacking in the first three games was flow. The Packers run a no-huddle offense that relies on tempo and rhythm and consistency. The first three games consisted long delays any time there was a penalty, any time the ball needed to be spotted, any time there was anything. Basically, there was no flow whatsoever, and I noticed that after the first 3 plays of the very first game. I don't know if that was a direct cause of the Packers struggles in the first 3 games. However, there was a very different flow in the 4th game, and the Packers offense was in sync and in a rhythm the entire game. I will say that about the real refs. They might be just as susceptible to bad calls, but they had control of the game that the replacements totally lacked.