Sunday’s Bears-Lions game was refereed by Jeff Triplette, and like most games refereed by Jeff Triplette, it was full of questionable calls. But one call stood out as particularly bizarre.
That was the play when Lions center Graham Glasgow was flagged for illegal hands to the face, even though replays clearly showed that it was actually Bears defensive lineman Eddie Goldman who illegally put his hands into the face of Glasgow. Why on earth would the Lions get a penalty for something a Bear did?
According to the Lions after the game, the answer is simple: The officials enforced the penalty on the wrong team, and admitted afterward that they had called it the wrong way.
Glasgow told the Detroit Free Press after the game that an official came to him afterward and told him, “Oh, I just switched you guys up. I meant to call it on 91, but you were blocking him, so I accidentally called it on you.”
Glasgow didn’t know how he could possibly respond to that.
“I was like, ‘Oh.’ They tell us not to yell at the refs, so I’m like, ‘Whatever, man,’” Glasgow said.
With a mistake like that, “Whatever, man,” is about all you can say.