The full extent of the adjustments to regular official crews is not officially known. It is clear, however, that Friday’s nationwide field stop will result in significant changes to the usual groupings of driving crews.
On Saturday morning, the NFL made the announcement three non-umpires shall serve as judges for four Week 10 games, with one of them – Don Willard – serving as the referee for the 1:00 PM ET game between the Dolphins and Colts before traveling to Cincinnati for Sunday night’s Steelers-Bengals game.
Via Ben Austro or FootballZebras.com, three judges will work in other roles on sunday.
Referee Carl Cheffers and Referee Alex Kemp will serve as referees. Referee Shawn Hochuli (pictured) will serve as back judge.
The reconfiguration resulted from the NFL’s decision to assign officials to games within driving distance of their homes.
Austria also notes that replay officials for all Sunday games will work out of NFL headquarters. They were in Detroit on Friday for an all-day training session. Instead of going out to different locations in the game, they all went to New York.
It sets the stage for a potentially weird day, with any mistakes inevitably being blamed on the NFL’s inability to get the officials where they needed to be. If it works, though, it could prompt the NFL to reconsider its overall personnel plan if there’s a way to do it that cuts costs.
I think this is a vague remark. I hope it’s an offhand remark.
Either way, Sunday could get interesting. The players and coaches have reached where they need to be. Officials haven’t, and the deck has been dramatically reshuffled to ensure that every game will be properly staffed.