Nearly every NFL game includes one or more injuries to players. Thursday night’s game saw referee Adrian Hill suffer a non-contact leg injury that ended his night.
And then everyone saw that the league has no viable backup plan for the unexpected departure of the chief of the officiating crew.
Oh, they have a plan. It’s not just viable. Umpire Roy Ellison was given the white hat and, eventually, a microphone. Ellison became both the umpire and the referee for the rest of the game.
Two important jobs in one, for a game with plenty of playoff implications. And with two eyes instead of four watching the action behind the line of scrimmage, Ellison missed an obvious illegal touching violation in the fourth quarter, when a desperation throw by a harassed Josh Allen clearly struck one of his lineman.
There may have been other issues far less obvious in real time. Holding fouls may have been missed. Illegal hands to the face, too. Hits to Allen that may have been roughing the passer, which falls squarely within the referee’s purview and not the umpire’s, may not have been spotted.
In the postseason, the NFL assigns five alternate officials to the wild-card round and divisional games. For the conference championships and Super Bowl, the eight-person crew has eight on-site alternates. For 272 regular-season games, an injury results in the crew shrinking by a member — and by someone else taking on the assignments of two officials.
At a time when the NFL absolutely should be implementing full-time officials, the absence of any alternates at regular-season games is jarring. With the proliferation of gambling, from which the NFL handsomely profits, some of the millions the league is making should be directed to having extra officials on site for every game that counts.
Ideally, each member of the crew would have an understudy. At a minimum, there should be one extra official who can step in if/when an injury happens.
It’s amazing it doesn’t happen more often. Artificial turf is unforgiving. The middle-aged-and-older officials are exerting themselves to keep up with the action. (And, at times, to scamper away from a trampling.) A torn Achilles tendon (which seems to be what happened to Hill) happens all the time to aging bodies — even when not trying to accelerate on cement covered by plastic grass.
Don’t expect the NFL to change anything, for one very important reason. The league views the entire officiating function as a cost that need not become more costly. In 2012, for example, the Commissioner justified a lockout of the officials by insisting that replacements would be just as effective. (Spoiler: They were not.)
But there’s no way to force the NFL to do it. No one is going to boycott NFL games because officials are part-time employees, or because there’s no extra official to step in when one of the officials is injured. Short of Congress insisting on a significant increase in the officiating budget as part of a broader look at the NFL’s safeguards for protecting the integrity of legal wagers, it will never happen.
Even if it should have happened years ago.
Texans backup quarterback Davis Mills has played well enough in the absence of C.J. Stroud for Houston to go 3-0 and get back into playoff contention. But Mills says there’s no thought that he could continue starting once Stroud is cleared to return from his concussion.
Mills said his expectation is that Stroud is set to get the starting job back, and Mills will go back to helping the team in whatever role he can behind Stroud.
“In my current situation I don’t think there’s a competition,” Mills said. “CJ’s the starter for this team. I’m just doing everything I can to bring my best foot forward every day, make everyone else around me better, and try to play my role to my best ability when I get thrown in there.”
The Texans have to be pleased with Mills’ performance in keeping the season alive without Stroud — and have to be pleased that he understands his place in the franchise.
Thursday night’s game was a coming out party for the Texans defense.
Houston allowed the fewest points and yards of any team heading into Week 12, but they’ve rarely been the center of attention the way they were against the Bills on Thursday night and they gave the expanded viewing audience a great example of what they’re capable of doing. They hit Josh Allen 12 times and brought him down for eight sacks while also forcing three turnovers in a 23-19 win.
The stats said the Texans had the league’s top defense heading into the game and linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair said there was no doubt about it after the win.
“We definitely got the best defense in the league,” Al-Shaair said, via DJ Bien-Amie of ESPN.com.” You just got to put it on tape every day.”
The Texans started the year 0-3, but their defense has sparked a turnaround that leaves them at 6-5 heading into road games against the Colts and Chiefs. If the unit can spur them to wins in those games, the Texans will find themselves squarely in the playoff mix and in the discussion for the top overall teams in the AFC heading into the postseason.
The 2021 draft class has more than a few quarterbacks who busted. There’s one guy who, four years later, is finally breaking out.
Davis Mills, the third pick in round three (taken one spot after the Vikings selected Kellen Mond), has won three games in a row, beating the Jaguars, Titans, and Bills. And while he’ll likely take a seat for C.J. Stroud when the Texans face the Colts in Week 13, Mills has done enough to get the attention of the league at large.
“I just want it to be seen that I am capable of going out there and winning big games,” Mills told PFT by phone after Houston’s 36-29 win over the Jaguars. “This was a big divisional win for our team as we’re still continuing to push forward throughout the season, we’ve got a lot of games still to go ahead of us and we want to start the momentum to on a streak and get in the playoffs.”
Under Mills, who gave the Broncos a run for their money after Stroud exited with a concussion, the Texans have surged from 3-5 afterthought to 6-5 contender. And Mills has supplemented his 26 starts from 2021 and 2022 with a series of solid performances that will potentially give him an eventual chance to be a starter elsewhere.
He’s signed through 2026, at a base salary next year of $6 million. It makes him a potential trade target in the offseason, given the not-so-robust class of free agents and incoming group of rookies who, for now, doesn’t seem to be as promising as it once was.
Against the Bills, Mills completed 16 of 30 passes for 153 yards and two touchdowns. Coupled with a dominant defense, he was able to outduel defending MVP Josh Allen.
For the season, Mills has thrown 150 passes, completing 88 of them for 879 yards, five touchdowns, and one interception.
However it plays out for Mills in the future, he’s making himself far more desirable than three of the five 2021 first-rounders: Zach Wilson, Trey Lance, Justin Fields. And Mills may have, over the last three-plus games, played his way onto the radar screen of teams that will looking for a new quarterback next year.
The Texans sacked Josh Allen eight times, hit him 12 times, intercepted him twice and forced and recovered a fumble by Khalil Shakir. Still, it came down to the end as the Texans held on for a 23-19 victory over the Bills.
It was Houston’s third consecutive win, with all three coming without C.J. Stroud, as the Texans climbed back to 6-5. The Bills fell to 7-4.
The Bills managed to make it a game, even though the Texans felt in control the final three quarters.
Buffalo stayed alive on fourth-and-27 with 51 seconds left on a trick play, with Joshua Palmer catching a short pass and lateraling to Khalil Shakir for a 33-yard gain to the Houston 26. Gabe Davis nearly made a miraculous catch inside the 5-yard line on the next play, but he got only one foot down in bounds.
That was as close as the Bills would get against a relentless Texans defense that saw Will Anderson get 2.5 sacks of Allen and Danielle Hunter contribute two more.
Calen Bullock made his second interception of Allen on fourth-and-6 from the Houston 22 with 18 seconds left.
Allen finished 24-of-34 for 253 yards and two interceptions. Shakir caught eight passes for 110 yards, and James Cook ran 17 times for 116 yards and a touchdown.
Mills completed 16 of 30 passes for 153 yards and two touchdowns, an 8-yarder to Jayden Higgins and a 2-yarder to Christian Kirk. Nico Collins caught three passes for 55 yards, and Woody Marks ran for 74 yards on 16 carries.
