The NFL’s head of officiating says the referee did the right thing under the circumstances when the overtime coin flip went awry in Saturday’s Packers-Cardinals game.
NFL V.P. of Officiating Dean Blandino said on NFL Network that referee Clete Blakeman was operating on the fly when he decided that his first coin toss wasn’t fair because the coin failed to flip. Blandino said Blakeman made a good judgment call in the moment.
“I have not seen this before in any level of football where the coin didn’t actually flip,” Blandino said. “And although the rule book doesn’t specifically state that it must rotate, I think common sense would dictate that the coin has to flip in order to have a coin toss. I thought Clete did the best job he could with what he had and common sense would dictate that he would flip it again.”
This NFL season has seen too many bad calls from referees, but the coin flip flap was more an odd moment than a bad call. Blakeman’s boss says Blakeman handled the odd moment as well as he could have.
