







SEATTLE – Several hours after the completion of one of the more memorable games in Monday Night Football history, Marshawn Lynch was sitting in a private room in the back of the Metropolitan Grill, celebrating a thrilling, last-second victory with friends and family members over big steaks and fat lobsters.

Then, with the flick of a remote control, Big Brother appeared and left a rancid taste in the Seattle Seahawks halfback's mouth.

View photos

A waitress pointed the remote at the large mirror on the wall behind Lynch, and it suddenly morphed into an enormous, high-definition television screen. Within seconds, Lynch craned his neck and joined his dining companions in viewing a replay of rookie quarterback Russell Wilson's 24-yard touchdown pass to wideout Golden Tate, giving the Seahawks a 14-12 triumph as time expired and sending 68,218 fans at CenturyLink Field into hysterics.

[Dan Wetzel: Roger Goodell needs to immediately clean up NFL officiating mess]

As Lynch watched Packers safety M.D. Jennings snatch the pass out of the sky and pull it to his chest while Tate, who had blatantly pushed off against Green Bay cornerback Sam Shields, belatedly latched on one arm at a time, the running back's eyes grew big and his jaw dropped low. The room was dead silent as the realization gripped Lynch and his companions: Like most of the viewing public, they now understood that the Seahawks had received an extraordinary gift from the replacement officials.

"We didn't win that game," someone at the table said, and nobody made a peep to challenge him.

By the time Lynch left the restaurant early Tuesday morning and, while waiting for his ride to arrive, reassured a group of Packers fans on Second Avenue almost apologetically that their team would bounce back from this bitter defeat, it was clear the league's already problematic officiating lockout had reached critical mass.

Dramatic as it may sound, it's quite possible that history will look back on Tate's illusory jump-ball touchdown as the moment the NFL jumped the shark.

The outcry over the replacement officials' game-deciding call (and the failure of the non-replacement replay officials to overturn it) crystallized the brewing anger toward NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and the owners he represents, whose collective insistence upon securing a favorable contract with the regular officials has clearly compromised the game's integrity.

[More: Seattle-Green Bay TD call could have altered $250 million in bets]

In the hours that followed, I heard from numerous current and former players and coaches – and not just because I got some unplanned TV time with Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers in the aftermath of Tate's catch/non-catch – who were aghast at the conspicuous intersection of incompetence and injustice.



A player on one of the Packers' NFC North rivals who should have been heralding the outcome instead decried the play as "the worst call in NFL history." A veteran NFL assistant went even further, saying, "Oh, it's really bad. It's Tuck Rule bad. Rodney King bad."

Memo to Goodell: That's bad.

View photos

Story continues