Lorenzo Reyes

USA TODAY

When millions of people tune in to watch Super Bowl 50 on CBS between the Carolina Panthers and the Denver Broncos, there’s a good chance they will hear officiating expert Mike Carey.

And many — at least on social media — have expressed displeasure about that.

But amid the lead-up to the Feb. 7 broadcast, the network expressed a strong vote of support for Carey.

“I’ve seen some of the criticism, and I think some of it is very hurtful, quite frankly,” CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus said Thursday on a conference call with reporters.

“But Mike is learning his craft and, I think more often than not, he has gotten it right. But I’ll also say that he has disagreed a number of times in some very high profile situations with what the (replay) officials have come back with.”

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The latest example came Sunday during CBS' AFC Championship Game telecast between the Broncos and the New England Patriots. Carey, who served as an NFL official for 19 seasons, is in his second year as the network’s rules analyst and gave his opinion on a play challenged by Patriots coach Bill Belichick.

The sequence occurred in the first quarter of the game, when Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning threw an incomplete pass that was overturned upon a review and ruled a lateral. Carey expressed his opinion that it was a forward pass and that the play would stand.

Instead, the Patriots took possession after replays clearly showed the ball to travel backwards.

“It’s funny, the vast majority of the calls that Mike has made have been correct,” McManus said. “I sit there on Sunday afternoon, and he’ll do sometimes, a dozen different cut-ins to our various regional games, and he’s almost always right.

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“Having said that, there have been a couple of big situations where Mike has disagreed with the end result that the officials have made. It’s not uncommon for an announcer to question a call that a referee has made. Unfortunately, when Mike disagrees with the eventual call, he receives an awful lot of criticism. A lot of these calls are judgment calls.

"Mike has perhaps gone out on a limb more than he should in trying to guess or speculate what a call will be, but all he is giving is his opinion of what he would call if he were on the field. And if it’s a different result, I think people get frustrated. But I think people would understand that Mike is only giving his opinion.”

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Follow Lorenzo Reyes on Twitter @LorenzoGReyes

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