Among the revelations:

1 – If officials haven’t looked to be working as hard (i.e. running) the last few years, don’t blame them.  Walt Anderson, now out of the officiating office, thought they could see things better if they were standing still from a long way away than if they were running close to the play.

2 – That same philosophy has led to the deterioration of standards in marking forward progress.

3 – Compared to all the other very well paid NFL front office employees in things like marketing, international outreach, DEI and a host of others – the actual employees in the officiating office make a pittance.  One of the new VPs won’t relocate to New York from his home in Jacksonville, presumably with cost of living a factor.

Read the whole thing below.

MINNESOTA

The Vikings now have the option of being Winter Warriors.  Kevin Seifert of ESPN.com:

The coldest NFL market now has what its local team is calling the “coldest uniform in the league.”

On Thursday, the Minnesota Vikings unveiled an almost entirely white alternate uniform for the 2024 season. The “Winter Warrior” look features a white helmet with a satin finish and is adorned by a metallic gray stripe inspired by the metal stripping found on ancient Viking helmets.

The team will wear the uniform for its Dec. 16 Monday night game against the Chicago Bears at U.S. Bank Stadium.

The uniform is based on the team’s decision to wear their standard white jerseys and white pants for one game in both the 2022 and 2023 seasons, which the Vikings dubbed “Winter Whiteouts.” For those games, they wore their usual purple helmets.

The 2024 uniform has been stripped of all “warm” shades, making it the first Vikings uniform in franchise history to not include gold. Instead, it includes a gray stripe on the pants and dripping icicles on the numbers.

The Vikings also updated the Nordic knot near the neckline to include three shields, a reference to coach Kevin O’Connell’s “Culture Shield” and mantra of “Our Way. Our Team. Our Process.”

The NFL allows its teams to have up to two alternative uniforms, which can be worn up to twice per season.

PHILADELPHIA

Eagles coach Nick Sirianni comes from an offensive background, but the Eagles are not going to run “his” offense.  Tim McManus of ESPN.com:

Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts said “95%” of the offense being installed this offseason is new, shedding light on the degree of change being made under offensive coordinator Kellen Moore following the team’s 1-6 slide to end 2023.

“You get to a point where you feel, I’m going to be comfortable with this, I like this, that time comes when you can rep it, rep it, rep it later on, but right now it’s been a lot of new inventory in — the majority of it, probably 95% of it being new — and so it’s just been that process, and it’s been a fun process because you get to see what works for other people,” Hurts said.

“I think the goal coming in was to learn Kellen’s offense and to master it, and I think that’s been a process, and by the end of it, I want it to be mine and have it in my own way.”

Coach Nick Sirianni and Moore, who replaced the fired Brian Johnson this offseason, had previously described the offense as a hybrid scheme that incorporates concepts from Sirianni’s and Moore’s previous systems.

Hurts explained that while some of the plays are similar, there are changes in details and responsibilities that make even the familiar a part of the learning curve.

“The X’s and O’s, the lines on the paper, they very well may be what they are supposed to be, but how I coach and how I detail these routes, how I coach the quarterback, what I want his timing to be, where I want him looking, where I want his eyes. Are receivers reading routes or are they not reading routes? Are there alerts on this, are there checks and adjustments built in on this or is this something the quarterback has to do? That’s what makes a system a system,” he said.

It was clear during both OTA practices and the Eagles’ minicamp, which wrapped Thursday, that players are still adjusting to the new details. The timing between Hurts and his playmakers has been hit or miss, and the same can be said for quarterbacks Kenny Pickett and Tanner McKee as well.

Still, there is some excitement about what the offense will look like once the players get it down. One noticeable change is the jump in motion plays. Philadelphia was last in pre-snap motion last season.

“I think it’s going to be great to get a new style of offense,” receiver DeVonta Smith said. “Let guys, not have more freedom, but be able to do things that we weren’t allowed to do [last year] — move guys around and things like that.”

The Eagles’ season ended with a 32-9 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the wild-card round of the playoffs — completing the collapse following a 10-1 start. Johnson and the top defensive decision-makers, Sean Desai and Matt Patricia, were fired and replaced by Moore and Vic Fangio. Acknowledging his offense had grown “stale,” Sirianni indicated he would be taking a step back from offensive duties while putting Moore “in charge of the offense.”

The hope is the adjustments will get the Eagles back to their form in 2022, when they boasted a top-five group that helped carry them to an appearance in Super Bowl LVII.

Sirianni said he is pleased with the way Hurts is absorbing the new scheme.

“I think he has done a really nice job of really grinding away to be a master at the offense and all the things that come with it,” he said.

KANSAS CITY

A medical scare at Chiefs OTAs. Adam Teicher of ESPN.com:

Chiefs defensive end BJ Thompson is in stable condition at an area hospital after having a seizure and going into cardiac arrest, sources said.

Thompson, 25, was taken to the hospital by ambulance from the team’s practice facility Thursday morning.

The Chiefs sent players home from the facility instead of holding their regularly scheduled OTA practice. The practice was rescheduled for Friday.

Thompson was selected by the Chiefs in the fifth round of the 2023 draft from Stephen F. Austin. He played in one game as a rookie, registering two tackles.

BALTIMORE

The kicker is going to have to be a willing defender with the new rules.  PK JUSTIN TUCKER is bulking up.  Jamison Hensley of ESPN.com:

The NFL’s new kickoff rule has altered the workout routine for the league’s most accurate kicker.

Justin Tucker said he has noticed that XFL kickers have been involved in 25% of the tackles with the revamped kickoff play, which has led him to add a few pounds.

“This might be really surprising to a lot of you guys and a lot of my teammates because I don’t hang out in the weight room too frequently,” Tucker said after the Baltimore Ravens’ offseason practice Thursday. “Now I got to get some more shrugs, get the traps going a little bit, just to make sure I’m prepared for a little bit more contact.”

Asked whether he plans to add more muscle, Tucker said, “I have put on, like, 3.8 pounds. Can you guys tell? Probably not. But yeah, I’ll leave it at that.”

In March, NFL owners approved the massive change in kickoffs with a vote of 29-3. Under the new rule, which originated in the XFL, kickers will continue to kick from their own 35-yard line but the other 10 players on the kickoff team will line up at the receiving team’s 40-yard line, which is 5 yards from the return team. The kickers will represent the last line of defense.

Tucker, a seven-time Pro Bowl kicker, has made eight tackles in 195 games. His most recent tackle came Dec. 17, 2022.

“I don’t think [tackling is] necessarily something that is encouraged [for kickers], but it’s not discouraged either,” Tucker said. “It kind of just comes with a territory. It’s a football play. We’re all football players out there, and ultimately if a returner is beelining toward the end zone and I’m the last guy there to stop him, it is part of my job description.”

Tucker, 34, is the most accurate kicker in NFL history, converting 90.2% of his attempts (395 of 438). Since entering the league as an undrafted rookie in 2012, he has recorded the most field goals in the NFL with 395. His 66-yard, game-winning field goal in Detroit on Sept. 26, 2021, is the longest in NFL history.

The revised kickoff rule is a new challenge for Tucker, who hasn’t practiced tackling since he was in high school. He brought up the possibility of doing some tackling drills in training camp this year.

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“It’ll probably be really bad TV, but we’ll have fun doing it,” Tucker said.

According to Tucker, the Baltimore coaching staff has watched every XFL kickoff and sent some clips to Tucker for him to study. The Ravens are developing their own ideas on how to attack the play.

Last week, Kansas City Chiefs special teams coordinator Dave Toub said the team is considering using safety Justin Reid as a kickoff specialist because it would add a more proven tackler.

“Hell yeah, I want to be out there,” Tucker said. “At the same time, in fairness to the idea that a safety or a linebacker or somebody that has a little bit more training as a coverage athlete, as a tackler, yeah, I think it’s totally fair to turn over every stone and see what you got. Who knows? There might be a guy that can pinpoint drop the ball off the tee on the 5-yard line and then just go down there and smoke the ball carrier. I’d like to think I would be that guy.”

THIS AND THAT

ON THE REBOUND

Chris Trapasso of CBSSports.com identifies some breakout candidates for 2024.

Every year in the NFL, we see breakout stars. And they come in all shapes and sizes with different backstories. Here, we’re going to begin a breakout mini-series with young “rebound” selections who fell into the shadows of the football-watching world either due to injury or simple disappointment.

To qualify for this article, a player had to be entering either his second or third year in the NFL.

Let’s get to it.

Injury rebounds

Christian Gonzalez

NE • CB

Christian Gonzalez hurt his labrum in early October and was subsequently placed in season-ending injured reserve. Then a multitude of enormous franchise-altering developments took place with the Patriots, so it’s relatively easy to forgot how good the first-round pick from Oregon was in his first four NFL games.

The man-coverage specialist had three pass breakups, an interception, didn’t allow a touchdown in his coverage area, and missed just one tackle on 209 total snaps. A freak athletically with super-smooth hips and brilliant route-recognition skill, Gonzalez was born to play in New England’s defense (yes, even after the Bill Belichick era).

At nearly 6-foot-2 and a few pounds under 200 with threshold-meeting 32-inch arms, Gonzalez ran a 4.38-second 40-yard dash with a 41.5-inch vertical and a broad jump in the 95th percentile at the position. He has the athletic makeup of a premier perimeter cornerback. With plenty of time to rehab the injury, I fully expect Gonzalez to insert himself into the conversation as one of the league’s best, young, sticky coverage defenders in 2024.

Christian Watson

GB • WR

Man, that hamstring injury would not leave Christian Watson alone in 2023. It limited him to less than 41% of Green Bay’s offensive snaps. Fascinatingly, this thread on Twitter/X highlighted the work and research the Packers third-year pro did this offseason to potentially combat the nagging element of his hamstring issue.

To summarize, Watson found he had “20% asymmetry in the hamstring muscle between his right and left legs, which meant his left hamstring was 20% stronger than his right one.” Because of that, his weaker right hamstring simply couldn’t keep up with the explosive capabilities in his stronger left hamstring, which led to him missing 11 games over the past two seasons.

He’s now worked to close that gap to possibly under 10% asymmetry. And if both of Watson’s legs will cooperate in 2024, look out. Packers quarterback Jordan Love had elite-level production in the final eight games of 2023: 70.2% completion rate, 7.71 yards per attempt with 18 touchdowns and… one interception.

Plus, in Watson’s absence, plenty of other young specimens at receiver and tight end performed well, meaning Watson can’t be the focal point of defensive game plans this season.

Nolan Smith

PHI • LB

Nolan Smith tore his pectoral muscle during his final season at Georgia. Then, as a rookie, he suffered a shoulder injury with the Eagles. Those likely related ailments probably hindered his development on what was an absolutely loaded defensive front in Philadelphia.

Younger than both 2024 first-round edge rushers Laiatu Latu and Jared Verse, opportunity awaits Smith with the Eagles. While the team essentially flipped Haason Reddick for Bryce Huff, Smith’s deceptive point-of-attack power and block-shedding mastery — when healthy — should get him on the field on early downs to start his second season in the NFL.

But it’s not as though he’s incapable of generating pressure on the quarterback. This is the former No. 1 overall recruit in the nation who had a 40-yard dash, 10-yard split, vertical, and broad jump all at the 95th percentile or higher at the edge position at the 2023 NFL Scouting Combine. Now, seemingly fully healed, I expect Smith to play much closer to how he did at Georgia in 2022 when he had a pressure-creation rate of 18.6%.

Andrew Booth Jr.

MIN • CB

Andrew Booth Jr. was one of those players repeatedly mocked in the first round during the 2022 draft cycle who ultimately wasn’t selected until the second round, and draft analysts had a sneaking suspicion it was due to medical concerns. Then as a rookie, he had knee surgery in late November.

The Vikings, of course, trudged along at the cornerback spot, and Booth played just a little over 13% of the Vikings defensive snaps in 2023. Because of his incredibly slow, injury-filled start to his post-Clemson life, it’s a cinch to forget about Booth.

But he flashed glimmers of the highly fluid, supreme athlete he was with the Tigers in that tiny sample size of action in his second professional season. While he only knocked away one pass on 99 coverage snaps, Booth allowed four catches on eight targets for 30 yards and no touchdowns — good for a passer rating of 59.4.

Early-disappointment rebounds

Tyree Wilson

LV • DE

Tyree Wilson’s rookie season can be split into two, distinct parts.

After a mere nine pressures in his first 12 games — on 187 pass-rushing opportunities — Wilson emerged from the Week 13 bye a completely different player. From Week 14 through the remainder of the regular season, he pressured the quarterback 15 times on 121 pass-rushing snaps across five games.

While no one could possibly argue Wilson’s towering, athletic prowess — he’s taller and longer than Myles Garrett at a nearly identical weight — it was plainly obvious on film at Texas Tech he had a problem tapping into his burst off the snap, thereby putting him at a disadvantage once he moved on to the NFL.

It all started to come together down the stretch under Antonio Pierce’s watch, and Wilson won’t have to be “the guy” on the Raiders front thanks to superstar Maxx Crosby and up-and-comer Malcolm Koonce. But the physical gifts are too immense for Wilson to not take a step forward in 2024.

Cam Smith

MIA • CB

Cam Smith was my CB1 in the 2023 class. His disappointing rookie campaign in Miami was a shock to me. Now, with a fresh set of eyes on him at defensive coordinator — going from Vic Fangio to Anthony Weaver — Smith has a new lease on his football life.

At South Carolina, Smith was a magnet to the football, with six interceptions and 18 pass breakups on a mere 94 targets across four seasons. Heck, he barely played as a rookie, just 22 total snaps on defense.

Now, with Xavien Howard gone, Smith can step into a more sizable role on the perimeter, even with the addition of Kendall Fuller. Smith is taller than 6-foot and weighs 180 pounds with upper-level athleticism and a feisty attitude at the line and throughout the receiver’s route. He possesses the instincts, movement skill, and, critically, natural ball skills to make a sizable leap in his second season in Miami Gardens.

OFFICIATING DISFUNCTION

Kalyn Kahler of The Athletic does a deep dive into the state of NFL officiating.  It wasn’t good the last few years with Walt Anderson in charge (he changed the mechanics, told the officials to stop moving towards the play…) and may get incrementally better now, but don’t bet on it.

During a pregame meeting in 2022, Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin asked the officiating crew a question that had been bugging him.

So, who’s in charge here?

As one crew member recalls, Tomlin asked who in the league office was responsible for answering his questions about officiating decisions and who made the final decisions on replay reviews. “I have no idea,” the official told Tomlin that day. “I can’t tell you who’s the boss or who’s not. It’s been so secretive, and they’re just not very forthcoming.”

Tomlin shrugged. There was a game to play.

Last month, NFL teams received a long-awaited memo announcing structural changes to the league’s officiating department: two vice president hires and the addition of three former officials to the department’s staff, “as part of our ongoing Officiating Improvement Plan.” The memo, obtained by The Athletic, listed the new hires and described their qualifications but didn’t explain the plan’s details. In a separate statement announcing the hires to the public, Senior VP of officiating administration Perry Fewell referenced the plan but was light on specifics.

The NFL declined to comment on the record, but the “improvement plan” for the league’s officiating office is at least an admission that something is wrong, which comes as no surprise to those who have worked there.

“The officiating department is totally underfunded and understaffed,” said Scott Green, a former NFL official with 22 years experience, including nine as a referee, and the current executive director of the NFL Referee Association (NFLRA), the officials’ union.

“A nuisance to the NFL,” is how one former official describes it. “A necessary evil,” another said. “Whether it’s hubris, naivete, ignorance, there’s a belief that anybody can officiate with training.”

The league’s collective bargaining agreement with the NFLRA prevents current officials from talking to reporters, and three current referees declined to comment for this story. The Athletic spoke to 10 former officials, nine of whom worked for the NFL during most recent department leader Walt Anderson’s tenure. Many requested anonymity so they could speak without fear of retribution.

In April, the league announced that Anderson, who oversaw the department for the last four seasons, would vacate his role because his son Derek was hired as part of the 2024 class of officials. The NFL wanted to avoid a conflict of interest but didn’t say who would replace Anderson. A week before the start of the officials’ new league year on May 15, clubs were frustrated by the lack of information. So were the officials.

“We have a clinic the first week of June and we still don’t know who’s in charge,” Green said on May 7.

When the league finally announced the details of the restructure — the day after the officials’ season started — it was deja vu for many current and former department employees. The titles looked slightly different, but it was just another edition of what two ex-officials called a “revolving door.” This is the fifth time leadership has turned over since 2010, when Mike Pereira left and newly appointed NFL executive vice president of Football Operations Troy Vincent began presiding over the department. No one has lasted more than five years since.

“That’s when things really started to get funny up there,” a former official with experience dating back to Pereira’s tenure said. “We’re changing … every two or three years. By the third year, when (the guy’s) vision should really start to materialize, (he’s) gone.”

Morale among game officials is never going to be great — “We’re not partying on a yacht in the south of France,” former head of officiating Dean Blandino said. “This is hard.” Even so, former officials say morale sunk lower than the baseline negative under Anderson.

“They are not paying enough attention upstairs to what it takes to actually run an officiating department,” Green said.

There’s optimism about former umpire Ramon George and former replay official Mark Butterworth, the new VPs of training and replay, respectively. But there’s also skepticism as officials confront yet another shakeup.

“It’s the old smoke-and-mirrors trick with the league,” one former official said. “Where does the buck stop?”

Walt Anderson was never intended to run the roughly 140-person officiating department by himself.

When he was hired in 2020, the league divided the top job into three parts, each handled by a senior vice president. Al Riveron, a former referee, had been the sole leader in the prior regime, and it wasn’t going well, so he shifted to focus on replay. Fewell, a longtime NFL defensive coach, handled administration and communication with coaches. Anderson, a former referee, managed training and development. But Riveron left the NFL just before Anderson’s second season in 2021, and Russell Yurk, Riveron’s No. 2, took a leave of absence, so Anderson stepped into the gap.

That’s when coaches like Tomlin started to get confused about who was making the final decisions on replay. And with Fewell handling most of the communication with coaches despite not having an officiating background, clubs had trouble getting coherent explanations on decisions they disagreed with. When Yurk returned for the 2022 season, Anderson remained the primary replay decision-maker in addition to training and evaluating game officials, making him a de facto department head.

Officials are reviewed after each game by a team of graders at the league office. For the last three decades before Anderson took over, they received their final grades by the following Wednesday, which helped them learn and move on from the last game in time for the next one.

But former officials said Anderson started reviewing every game personally with the idea of improving consistency among crews. By last season, Green said officials weren’t getting their final grades until Friday or Saturday. One former official said he remembered receiving a downgrade from Anderson at 1:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning.

“Our guys are upset,” Green said. “You don’t want to be sitting in a pregame meeting on Saturday still wondering, ‘How did I do last week?’”

Anderson’s input often didn’t match the initial review other graders had finished by Wednesday, which confused some officials, particularly those without a lot of NFL experience. The changes could also be confusing for the department’s graders and trainers.

“The quality of their training is hampered,” one former official said. “You can do all this work and then it gets overridden by someone at the top. When a trainer says one thing to you on Tuesday and then you’re graded another way later in the week, that is conflicting messages that undermine the whole training.”

Anderson’s intentions may have been admirable, but the workload was massive, and, as one former official said, “It’s not sustainable because only Walt can do it.”

Those who have worked with Anderson described him as detail-oriented down to rote minutiae. Several former officials described his leadership style as “micromanaging.”

One former official remembers Anderson speaking to him in the headset during a game to tell him to get the chain gang member to move their chain a half inch out of the ‘white,’ the six-foot white rectangle just off the field where no players and coaches can stand. The chain crew is supposed to operate from just behind the white, but they’re rarely in perfect position.

“We’re worried about things like that in the middle of a game?” the former official said. “It’s so irrelevant.”

Anderson’s meticulous philosophy impacted morale. Former line judge Tom Symonette said crews went from receiving around four to five downgrades per game before Anderson to 15-20 downgrades per game with him. One former official said Anderson referenced video frames and used a stopwatch when evaluating decisions. Several former officials said his comments were harshly worded and at times, sarcastic, even for top-graded officials who’d qualified for playoff assignments.

“After about Week 4 or 5, I stopped reading them because they just made morale really bad,” said one former official with multiple playoff assignments.

Officiating teams are constantly criticized by fans, coaches, players and media, so when more criticism comes from inside the officiating department, it can feel like overkill. “The bedside manner has to be more positive,” Blandino said. “I always felt you can tell somebody they made a mistake but have them feel good about it.” (Editor’s note: Blandino was a freelance writer for The Athletic in 2017.)

NFL game officials aren’t full-time employees, and many are also successful business executives, some with their own companies. Anderson’s communication style was unlike what they experienced in their civilian jobs.

“Walt is just a straight-talker,” said one former official. “He is not about trying to make it soft or fluffy. In a business sense, he would struggle if he was working for me on my executive team.”

Anderson also implemented the biggest change in officiating mechanics — the way officials move on the field, where they stand to get the best view and how they work in concert to cover multiple angles — since Art McNally developed them in the 1970s.

In his first year, Anderson introduced “Move With Purpose,” a new philosophy developed with a neuro-ophthalmologist that instructed officials to remain as stationary as possible during a play. Physical movement decreases visual accuracy, so by standing still, Anderson taught officials they would be better positioned to see a play’s “mesh points,” crucial moments like when a ballcarrier’s knee goes down.

It made sense in theory, but former officials say that in practice, the change made them worse at their roles — and even could be dangerous. Officials agreed that moving during key moments isn’t optimal for seeing clearly, but they say they’ve trained for years to slow themselves down at just the right moment.

“Would you rather have 85 percent of the view that you need, or 100 percent of three views you don’t need?” one former official said.

For back judges, the deepest officials on the field, the change meant giving up goal line coverage and allowing pass plays to go by them. Instead of backpedaling to keep the play in front of them, they were instructed to freeze.

For officials on the line of scrimmage, it meant standing still while players barreled towards them. Line judges used to move into the backfield if a play was headed towards the sideline to watch the play from behind and stay safe. But Anderson told officials to stay where they were and step backward to avoid contact. Several were hurt, including a down judge who missed the remainder of the 2023 season after getting hit in Week 1.

“We were sitting ducks,” one former line judge said.

Line-of-scrimmage officials used to move with the ball carrier to get an accurate spot. Move with Purpose meant line judges could no longer follow, so they had to rule on a spot from several yards behind the play, which five former LOS officials said was much harder.

“There were a lot of missed calls because people were out of position,” a veteran official said. “I need to get up there to see if there’s a hold in front of the play. You can’t see it from 8 yards behind the play. Or if there’s a facemask up there, how the hell am I supposed to see that?”

“You see a lot of deeper plays where the official is just too far behind the play to really have an ability to effectively officiate that play,” Blandino said.

“There’s always been mechanics that guys liked and didn’t like,” retired NFL back judge Keith Ferguson said, but some veteran officials had a hard time adjusting. Several said they made uncharacteristic mistakes and received the worst grades of their careers in 2020. Even when they made the right decision, Anderson downgraded them if they moved incorrectly.

“I was having to remind myself, OK, don’t move,” one veteran official said. “I was thinking about mechanics as opposed to watching the play.”

Another former official said his grader told him he was in the top three for correct calls at his position, but he kept getting downgraded because he couldn’t reprogram his muscle memory. “Doesn’t it matter that you get it right on the field?” he said he asked his grader. “And he told me, ‘Well, apparently not anymore.’”

“I couldn’t relax,” Symonette said. “What made me successful my first 15 years did not make me successful anymore.”

Symonette found himself out of the league because of it. He had been an accomplished official with 10 playoff assignments, including Super Bowl XLVIII, with his last postseason assignment in 2017. After the frustrating 2020 season, he put in his four-year retirement notice. When the league office got his notice, he said Anderson let him go right away.

Every head of officiating tweaks mechanics to some degree, but former officials said Anderson’s felt more drastic and were rushed into practice. When Blandino was in charge, he had a committee of officials meet to discuss mechanics and decide which needed updating. Several former officials said they didn’t learn about Anderson’s changes until they got comments or downgrades about their movement during the season.

Perhaps the philosophy’s biggest flaw was its rigidity. When they’d talked about mechanics under previous leadership, the conversations left room for practicing judgment, a skill officials develop over years of game experience. Under Move with Purpose, there was no room for situation-based decisions.

“Officiating went backward 25 years because of those mechanics,” one former official said.

NFL coaches, stop reading here.

This season, an abnormally high number of inexperienced officials will take the field: 27 will have three years or less, and a third of the 120 officials have five years or less. Twelve officials retired after 2022 (every departure is characterized as a retirement), and 10 officials retired after the 2021 season, just the second time that 10 or more officials left in back-to-back years.

Most officials agree that it takes about five years to become proficient at the NFL level.

“There’s been a big turnover,” Ferguson, the former back judge, said. “It’s going to take time to get guys up to speed because they’ve lost a lot of good officials.”

A 20-year vet, Ferguson left the ranks after the 2022 season, and he said when he retired he probably hadn’t met at least half of the officials. “It used to be that every crew had at least four or five experienced officials that they put you around,” he said. “Now you may only have one or maybe two experienced officials in there.”

Another former official said when he got into the league around 20 years ago, most crews had one official that was “scratchy” or not up to snuff, but it would be unusual for a crew to have two. A current official sent him the 2024 crew assignment list and after reviewing it, he said, “now you can’t find a crew that has four strong officials.”

The turnover and inexperience of today’s NFL officials can be traced all the way down to the high school level. Bill Topp, president of the National Association of Sports Officials, said that after the pandemic, state associations and other national organizations reported a 25 to 33 percent drop in the number of high school officials. For a sport like football, with a handful games and limited reps per season, that drop has had a huge impact on the quality and training of new officials.

“How fast can we get them ready?” Topp said. “In the old days, you had to work the first few seasons of youth and freshman football, then JV, and now we have first-year officials getting varsity games immediately because the need is so great.

“The reality is we are taking more assignment chances than we ever have. We’re putting people on games that we believe aren’t quite ready yet, but the numbers are forcing it.”

The inexperience at the high school level has created a mess in college. Symonette has been the coordinator of officials for the Division II Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference since 2014 and has seen a steady decline in the football IQ and overall preparedness of officials coming from high school. “I’ve got to retrain them and untangle everything they’ve learned,” he said.

“If you go down to the lower ranks, a lot of people don’t want to officiate anymore,” Ferguson said. “When I was hired, you had to have at least 10 years of a college officiating background. That’s gone.”

NFL officials have an annual clinic in June, then work training camps and joint practices to get reps before the season. College officials in the developmental pipeline work preseason games with veteran crews. But the individual training available to officials during the season is self-directed, according to one former official who sent a few plays each week to a trainer who would tell him, yes, that’s a foul, or no, it wasn’t.

The expansion of replay assistance since 2021 means that officials don’t have to get the spot of the ball right on the first try or keep the time perfectly. Replay officials regularly tinker with the game clock and spots during games, instructing crews to move the ball a half yard forward or backward, in part because the Move With Purpose mechanics have made officials less accurate on forward progress.

Anderson’s mechanics, paired with inexperienced officials, have expedited the need for more replay assistance to save the day. Pereira said he’s noticed officials are much more tentative. “Much of the power is being taken away from the officials on the field,” he said.

Several former officials say that replay has become a crutch for many crews and a reason that development doesn’t feel like a priority. Blandino likens it to driving a car with a backup camera. When he drives without one, he can barely remember how to get out of the driveway.

“If I know that if I don’t drop a beanbag in the right spot, (it’s OK) because replay is going to correct it, then I’m not going to focus on the mechanics that I’ve been doing forever,” Blandino said. “And that means that my overall level of officiating is going to decline.”

Instead of hiring another Senior VP to replace Anderson and co-chair the department with Fewell, the league posted two lower-level VP jobs overseeing officiating training and development and replay training and development. Both positions, which would report to Fewell, listed a salary range of $215,000-315,000.

That range provided more fodder for the notion that the league doesn’t spend enough to staff the department — or to compete with the broadcast networks that poached Pereira and Blandino, the favorites among officials who worked under six different leaders over the last 20 years.

“It’s the second most important job in the league,” Pereira said. “I don’t give anybody beyond the commissioner a more important position than the head of officiating. You are dealing with the game and with the coaches and the GMs. If they trust you, you are dealing with the media. You are the face.”

“Put it in the top 10 (of league office salaries),” Blandino said. “It’s not even in the ballpark. When the commissioner is making $50 or $60 million, the delta is the Grand Canyon-plus.”

The league had to sweeten the offer a bit to get George to come off the field, according to Green, who said George told him that he took the job for more than the posted salary. Multiple former officials said the former umpire also will not relocate to New York from his home in Jacksonville, Fla. An NFL spokesperson declined to comment on officiating personnel decisions.

Some former officials worry that George, who declined to comment for this story, might plan to return to on-field officiating after a couple of years — like line judge Carl Johnson did after leading the department from 2010-12 — and the turnover will continue.

Pereira said he’s encouraged by what he’s heard about George from some of the trainers. “He is listening,” Perreria said. “He is not dictating what they are going to do. He made a comment like, ‘I am an umpire. I haven’t worked deep, you have to educate me.’ That kind of approach is a positive approach.”

In another lifetime, there was consistency in the department. McNally, the godfather of NFL officiating, led the group for 23 years, then Jerry Seeman for 10 years, then Pereira for nine. “When I got the job after Jerry, it was a harder job,” Pereira said. “And when people got the job after me, it was a harder job.”

In 2010, Pereira left for Fox Sports to become the first-ever network rules analyst. After Blandino made the same move following the 2016 season, Pereira said he saw “the spiral starting” and urged members of the competition committee to hire Blandino back.

Blandino said he talked with the league about returning a couple of years ago. The conversations progressed, and he outlined a reimagined structure for the department as well as what he was looking for in compensation. He said he loved working for the league, but during those talks, it was clear to him he wouldn’t be able to hire who he wanted to — or get paid enough to do it.

Most officiating observers agree that the league’s new structure looks good on paper. But will George and Butterworth be empowered to make the changes they want to?

“We talk about this Officiating Improvement Plan, but OK, what is it?” Blandino said. “How are we going to get better? How are we going to quantify that? What are the steps?”

A person who attended the annual clinic in Dallas this week said no additional specifics were provided about the improvement plan and that leadership had no information about the grading process for the 2024 season.

Anderson is still working in the department as a rules analyst and club communications liaison. When the officials met this week, he presented reports on rule changes that came from competition committee meetings. The person in attendance said officials were relieved to learn that the department would be reversing the Move With Purpose mechanics.

Green attended the clinic and said that George told him they’d be going back to the old ways. “What most officials are more comfortable using,” Green said. “They are going to let guys run.”