NFL defends 'very good' officials, says one Patriots penalty was called right

The NFL puts out a weekly officiating video with NFL vice president of officiating Dean Blandino, and those videos are getting more interesting as scrutiny increases on the officials.

There were two takeaways from Blandino this week: The officials are doing a good job, and one controversial call in the New England Patriots-Denver Broncos game was right.

Blandino didn't go through every controversial call in that game (though, who wouldn't have watched that?) but he did discuss one big call: A key offensive pass interference call on New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski. Patriots fans have complained that Gronkowski is being singled out by officials. He has six offensive pass interference calls against him, and the Boston Globe said that is more than 29 NFL teams have been flagged for this season.

But on a key call on third down in the fourth quarter, Blandino said it was right because Gronkowski used his forearm to push off Broncos safety David Bruton to get separation. That's offensive pass interference.

"Whether he uses the forearm or an open hand, the key is the extension," Blandino said.

"If the receiver leans in with a bent arm, and there's no extension, there's no foul," Blandino said. "But when you extend the arm to push off in that manner, that is pass interference."

Plenty of 50-50 calls have been debated like they were absolutely wrong from that game (this will come as a big surprise to you, but most of the complains have come from the Boston area of the country), and that's part of the problem with the perception of the officials. When people can watch on 60-inch HDTVs and see replays in super slow motion, officiating becomes really easy. It's not that simple on the field.

Blandino stuck up for the officials at the beginning of the video (which is here on one of the NFL's sites). He said that with about 160 plays per game, and all of the decisions made before, during and after those plays by the officials, there are only about 4.3 mistakes per game.

"There's a perception that officiating is not very good at the moment," Blandino said. "The reality is that officiating is very good.

"We are talking about a very small number of mistakes. We're talking about a handful of plays that have happened in high-profile situations. Those have been mistakes, we own then, we have to make the corrections, the adjustments to make sure they don't happen again. But we're talking about a handful of plays ... The officials are very, very good at what they do. It's a very difficult job. They see it once in real time, full speed, and we all get to evaluate them from multiple different angles with high definition slow motion replays."