AP

The two officials who are being widely criticized today for blown calls last night both have work histories that may help to explain why they made those big mistakes.

The first blown call was the inadvertent whistle by line judge Gary Arthur. As noted by Ben Volin of the Boston Globe, Arthur has just recently returned from suffering a broken collarbone, broken ribs and a collapsed lung in a sideline collision during a Week One game. On Monday night, Arthur nearly collided with Bills coach Rex Ryan on the sideline just before he blew the whistle. It wouldn’t be surprising if Arthur is a little skittish about sideline collisions after the injuries he suffered, and he blew the whistle as soon as he sensed he was about to run into someone on the sideline.

The second blown call was on the last play of the game, which shouldn’t have been the last play of the game. Bills receiver Sammy Watkins fell down and rolled out of bounds with two seconds left, where the clock should have stopped. But head linesman Ed Walker ruled that Watkins gave himself up inbounds. Walker has only worked for a year and a half in the NFL after a long career as a college football official, and the rules in college football are different: Winding the clock would have been the correct call if a college player had done what Watkins did. Walker apparently forgot the difference between the NFL rule and the college rule, costing the Bills a final play in the process.

It’s useful to identify the reasons that mistakes are made — not because anything can be done to change the bad calls after the fact, but so the league can work to prevent bad calls in the future. The league should do more to make sure officials coming back from injuries are really ready to return, and do more to make sure officials understand all the rules differences when they move from college to the NFL.