Dallas - Cincy Hit

[ajmc]

Originally Posted by MD Longhorn

The problem in this case is that the official that's 20-someodd yards away didn't give the benefit of the doubt to the official that was right on the play who didn't flag the perfectly legal hit.

A reasonable "rule of thumb" has always been that an official who actually sees something, should trump a fellow official who may not have seen that same something.

At any level it's important that officials who share a sideline have discussed, in some detail, how they will interact on collaborative calls, and I would suspect at the NFL level such discussion is an integral part of pre-game review. There's really no doubt involved when one official sees something his fellow official was not in position to see, nor may have been looking for (as discussed in the pre-game responsibility review).

If there was some dispute between officials, they were obviously skilled enough to understand any such discussion would be held in private.