Mike Pereira’s job used to entail supervising the NFL’s officials and grading them on the quality of their work. If Pereira still had that job, and if he were grading the replacement officials by the same standards that he used to grade the regular officials, he says he’d flunk the replacements.
In an interview with ESPN, Pereira said he believes the replacements are doing their best. But he doesn’t believe their best is good enough.
“People have asked me to grade them because that’s what I used to do when I worked for the league,” Pereira said. “For the level that these people are working at, I think they’ve done a pretty good job. I think they’ve worked within their capabilities. For Division II or III people, I think the job they’ve done would be like a C-plus. I would say this, though: If the regular guys are on the field and they perform like this, they get an F. They have done a decent job for their capabilities. Is it NFL, the level we should expect in the NFL? No, I really don’t think it is. I think it’s not going to resolve itself for a couple weeks, but I think we do deserve a bit better product than we’ve had on the field.”
Pereira has consistently taken the side of his old officiating colleagues in their ongoing battle with the NFL, so his comments aren’t surprising. At this point, what would be surprising is if the officials working tonight’s Cowboys-Giants game run everything smoothly and make it through the opener without any major mistakes.
