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Roger Goodell: ‘I think our officials do an extraordinary job’

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NFL officials have been under the microscope this season for some questionable calls that have perhaps impacted game-ending results, but they still have full support of commissioner Roger Goodell.

At Wednesday’s NFL owners meeting that took place in Irving, Texas, Goodell addressed the steps that are being taken to ensure the rulebook is followed.

“I think our officials do an extraordinary job,” Goodell said per NFL Media’s Dan Hanzus. “I think what we see now through technology is we see things we could never see before. But I think what it does is it validates the quality of our officiating. We all recognize that officials are going to make mistakes. What we need to do is try to avoid those mistakes as much as possible, train them differently and improve the quality of the officiating and use technology to help them when a mistake does occur.”

In his 20-minute press conference, Goodell said that how games are being officiated was a topic discussed with all of the owners. And when NFL Media’s Judy Battista asked if the NFL was taking steps to improve the confusing “what constitutes a catch rule,” Goodell responded positively.

“The answer to that is yes. The Competition Committee has looked at that, but I’ll go one step further with you. A couple weeks ago, I asked several football personnel, including former GMs, current GMs, current individuals, former players, former officials, to come together and try to see if we can study this and come up with some proposals for the Competition Committee to consider.”

“We want clarity to that. We want to find a better solution if it’s out there.”

To this day, there still seems to be utter confusion when it comes to controversial catches or non-catches.

Setting the catch rule aside, the NFL has certainly been experiencing some sketchy officiating, enough that the league has pulled Pete Morelli’s crew from the upcoming Monday Night Football matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins.

This was due to some glaring errors made in favor of the Arizona Cardinals when they played the San Francisco 49ers last Sunday.

Regarding potential officiating improvements, Goodell said “no stone will be left unturned.” Considering the widespread problems, that should be a good thing.

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