Last night, Dec. 30th 2023, The Detroit Lions were essentially robbed of a win in Dallas due to poor officiating by Brad Allen’s absurdly incompetent officiating crew, this year alone in primetime games that crew has been on the wrong side of THREE(3) game deciding calls:

• The non DPI call during the end of the Chiefs v Packers game that potentially cost the Chiefs a win
• The one sided flurry of penalties against the Dolphins during the Dolphins v Eagles game
• The worst of all that actually did decide the outcome of the game the ineligible receiver downfield for the Detroit Lions to negate a successful 2-point try

It’s been a very tough year for NFL officiating and those officials that actually do understand the rules to a T and do their very very best to get every call right and last night Brad Allen’s crew has made a mockery of not just the NFL alone but NFL officiating and those officials by pouring fuel on to a fire that has been rising every week in the NFL this year due to horrible missed calls and non calls all year but none of those calls have been quite as horrific as this call was last night.

The call made by Brad Allen’s crew last night affects many outcomes to the regular season, including the Lions chance at the No. 2 playoff seed and even potentially the No. 1 seed but that’s not even the worst part of this whole scenario, last night the NFL and Brad Allen spit in Detroit’s face and disrespected the sanctity of this game, there are actions put in place to avoid these types of situations, specifically, when coaches and officials meet pre game to explicitly go over trick plays and the formations and eligible receivers of those said trick plays, they go over ever single one that may come up during the game so that the officials can be prepared and know exactly what they need to be looking for to avoid scenarios like this, it’s not just talked about between the officials it’s laid out on a board with X’s and O’s

Lastly there is a plethora of video evidence circulating the internet of proof that No. 68 Taylor Decker did indeed report as eligible wether it’s video of him actually talking to Brad Allen himself or post game press conferences with players and coaches saying that he did but, in the videos of Decker reporting to Brad Allen you see Brad Allen nod and I get the argument of No. 70 Dan Skipper causing confusion as he runs toward Decker and Allen’s conversation but Allen is directly in conversation with Decker and it is not one players responsibly to report for another player so even if Allen thought Decker was telling him that Skipper was reporting as eligible that is unacceptable for Allen to accept a player reporting another player as eligible and as stated earlier these plays are explicitly outlined in pregame so Brad Allen had been notified by Dan Campbell that Dan Skipper would be sent on to the field as a diversion to cause confusion but that confusion should have only confused the defense not a head official who was made aware in pre game. 

Now I absolutely know that this will not get the outcome of this game overturned but I can only hope that this word gets out there because this is a disgusting act and action needs to be taken, I’ve seen the reports of Brad Allen’s crew getting downgraded and not being able to officiate in the playoffs which is certainty a worthy result, but this rule is in place for a reason and it would be nice to see it be put into effect.

Legit arguments can be made for Brad Allen getting fired and there is already a legit argument that officiating needs to be in house, enough of this BS side job hustle they are ruining the purity of the game by not dedicating themselves to the craft of officiating. 

Here in Detroit we do not accept moral victories but I do not believe this is a moral victory, we won that game.

One Pride, Go Lions