Foxboro Screwjob: Roger Goodell's Failed Plan To Bamboozle The Patriots Vince McMahon-Style
By Matt Dolloff (@mattdolloff)
BOSTON (CBS) -- The Patriots don't need your sympathy. They're not the first team to get hoodwinked by a heinous gaffe from league officials, whether on the field or in the booth. But let's just call it like it is: the league still has it out for the Patriots, and now the league is just shamelessly kicking dirt in their face.
The NFL has had a disturbing amount of bizarre gaffes by the referees, clock operators, and various other league officials throughout the 2015 season, and many of them have seemed to happen on Monday Night Football with the whole country watching. The mistakes are so maddeningly dumb and league officials look so bewilderingly incompetent, it's hard not to get a feeling that your team is on the bad end of a World Wrestling Entertainment-style screwjob if the calls don't go your way.
And at this point, it's hard not to look at Roger Goodell and his minions and not think of Vince McMahon and his corporate stooges. It's been a running joke for a while now, but the referees' weekly brain-farts are slowly turning it into a reality.
With ESPN in town for Monday Night Football, the league ostensibly busted out one of their most confidential trick plays to prevent the Patriots from coming out with a win. Much like the Patriots pulled out Julian Edelman's double-pass and creatively deceptive formations against the Ravens in last year's Divisional playoff, a desperate Roger Goodell was forced to call the inadvertent whistle play.
That's not to say the Patriots played great - the offensive line struggled to protect Tom Brady all night and the Julian Edelman-less receiving corps had trouble getting open. Brady didn't help matters with a handful of forced or inaccurate throws. So to steal a line from Mr. McMahon...In the interest of fairness, the Patriots did little to help themselves.
But that didn't stop fans of "Attitude"-era WWE from seeing Monday night's asinine inadvertent whistle and not immediately think of the infamous Montreal Screwjob at Survivor Series 1997, in which McMahon subverted wrestling storylines and ordered the bell to be rung to steal the WWE Championship away from Bret "Hit Man" Hart. The only thing missing from the whistle gaffe was Brady spitting in Roger Goodell's face.
Mr. McMahon would make a great living over the years following the debacle in Montreal, constantly doing everything he could to rig matches in his favor. He pulled another bell-ringing screwjob at the following Survivor Series, forced "Stone Cold" Steve Austin into a title match with himself as the guest referee, and made up rules and matches as he went along.
The NFL hasn't been able to catch the Patriots doing anything outside of the rules this season and no one has been able to beat them on the field, so obviously the next course of action would be a series of riggings. They are hell-bent on stopping the Patriots from finishing the job on their revenge tour, so Goodell is now resorting to assuming the role of Mr. McMahon to Brady's Stone Cold.
Unfortunately for Goodell, he hired incompetent boobs to do his bidding, and sometimes they mistakenly gifted the Patriots some calls of their own. They ruled Sammy Watkins in bounds on the last play of the game when they were supposed to use it on LaFell, and the phantom flag on Rex Ryan was supposed to add insult to injury for Bill Belichick but instead was a makeup call for the whistle.
Clearly the refs were just...um...inadvertently throwing wrenches in Goodell's master plan.
There must have been a miscommunication at the meeting between Goodell, the Bills, and the officials. It seems that Gene Steratore's crew was under the impression that they were supposed to screw both teams, to distract fans on both sides from what was really happening. That Sammy Watkins call at the end? That was supposed to be for Brandon LaFell. But it's no shock that Goodell and the league office would botch their screwjobs as much as anything else.
Tyrod Taylor clearly got the memo, though. Here's where he earned his under-the-table paycheck trying to draw a personal foul on this perfectly executed flop. He even injured himself as he flopped after stumbling for about 19 yards - that's just dedication to your craft.
Despite the ineptitude of the Goodell's stooges in attempting to bring his master plan to fruition, they did execute the cornerstone of their strategy with the inadvertent whistle. Goodell had them prepared to blow first, ask questions later whenever the Patriots had a clear shot at an easy touchdown, and it was just a great heads-up play by the official. Gotta tip your cap to them, really.
The league obviously needed the screwjob to succeed for the Patriots to lose, because the Bills got consistent pressure on Brady all night and still couldn't hold the Patriots to under 20 points. It also didn't help the league that Rex Ryan still has no idea how to manage the clock late in games. Not to mention, the Patriots had their own secret weapon: Leodis McKelvin, the special teams mole who first infiltrated the Bills in 2009.
When the Pats' opponents don't quite play along, you need to take matters into your own hands.
Goodell's McMahon-esque call for a Whistle To Nowhere is no longer a secret weapon, though, and the NFL will need to come up with new schemes to stop the Patriots' winning streak. The refs will need to get dirt in their eyes, slip on banana peels, get distracted by cheerleaders, whatever they can to make sure they miss the important calls that decide the game.
Good thing the Patriots pulled out the win Monday night, or else Goodell's Foxboro Screwjob would live on forever in infamy.
Matt Dolloff is a writer for CBSBostonSports.com. His opinions do not necessarily reflect that of CBS or 98.5 The Sports Hub. Read more from Matt here. Follow him on Twitter @mattdolloff and email him at mdolloff@985thesportshub.com.
