Former Cowboy Daryl Johnston saw NFL’s referee problem coming years ago. He has a solution

The Dallas Cowboys win over the Detroit Lions is the NFL’s latest example of “What can happen when part time employees work million dollar events.”

Missed calls are as inevitable as a Jerry Jones’ exaggeration.

The NFL has more money than a few first-world nations, and yet its officials are the occasional coffee-stain on the highest profile professional sports league in North America.

The botched 2-point attempt by the Lions in their 1-point loss to the Cowboys on Saturday night at AT&T Stadium was another unfortunate instance of a blown call at the worst possible moment.

Former Dallas Cowboys fullback Daryl “Moose” Johnston foresaw some of this coming years ago. He also has some ideas how to help with an issue that has become a parachute of razor blades on this 2023 NFL season.

Moose is an NFL game analyst for Fox Sports, and now is the president of football operations for the new United Football League, which was recently announced as the name for the merger of the XFL and USFL.

“You have to be a forward thinker, and you have to got to see what happened to the NFL coming,” Johnston said Wednesday in a Zoom interview. “A lot of their senior referees were getting ready to time out at the same time. “You had no developmental process (for younger) officials at the time.

“So you have a lot of young officials being put in an NFL game that moves super, super quick.”

This is an obscure detail that the average fan is going to miss; it takes a real NFL degenerate to know the years of experience of a referee.

One of the recurring, constant criticisms of the NFL is that its officials are basically part-time. From a cost-benefit perspective, what is an NFL referee supposed to do from February 1 to July 25?

One NFL game has all of the necessary parts for a comedy of screwups. Football has too many rules, the game moves so fast, and with the advent of replay there is no allowance for human error.

“It’s not easy; these guys are right the majority of the time,” Johnston said. “The frustrating thing is the mechanical component that happened to Dallas and Detroit. How do you not have that?

“Does (Lions coach) Dan Campbell have to own a little bit of that for trying to be too cute?”

Yes.

Since we’re on this topic, Johnston also said, “There is also striking a balance with the video assist. Sometimes we are going to (the league office in) New York when we don’t have to go to New York. Empower these guys. Help them, but don’t take the game out of their hands. We have some that are obvious 5-yard penalties but we’re sitting out there for 45 seconds.”

If the NFL is going to insist on keeping its referees as part-time employees, there has to be a way for them to improve in the offseason.

This is where Johnston’s UFL comes in.

“There is an opportunity for officials to come down into our league,” Johnston said.

This should be done yesterday, but since we are nothing without lawyers and billable hours, even if the NFL and its officials want to be a part of this it’s not one phone call.

Former veteran NFL officials Mike Pereira and Dean Blandino worked with the respective spring leagues, and they both have long relationships with NFL senior officiating administrators, Perry Fewell and Walt Anderson.

All four share the same goal, just get the call right.

“I expect them to reach out to us to be more interactive on their side,” Johnston said. “It shouldn’t be us bringing new opportunities to officials, it should be some of the young guys coming down to us because you need more reps.

“You need to work a game. This (UFL) game is not going to move as fast as the NFL, but it’s going to move a lot faster than a training camp, or a joint practice. Give them as many reps as you possibly can, and put them in stressful situations where you have to move quick.”

Logical. Reasonable. Doable.

The NFL’s relationship with the XFL and USFL had been mostly at arm’s length. The NFL does not want to give a spring football league a penny, and as such there is no affiliation.

A handful of players from the spring leagues, kicker Brandon Aubrey and returner KaVontae Turpin, both used their time there to land sports with the Dallas Cowboys.

Since the the NFL shares the same broadcast partners, ESPN and Fox, with the UFL, there is room for cross over on multiple fronts. The UFL will have a 10-game regular season, a perfect window for the NFL referee who needs practice.

AI and computers are not going to fix NFL officiating, because all of this is too human.

There is way to make this better, and “encouraging” the refs to get more reps in the UFL is not a complete fix but it’s practice these guys need.