Myles Garrett, Baker Mayfield Criticize Officiating In Loss to Chargers
While both also noted they had opportunities to win the game independent of the officiating, quarterback Baker Mayfield and defensive end Myles Garrett had separate issues with the officiating in the Cleveland Browns loss to the Los Angeles Chargers.
After making multiple mentions of leaving too many points on the board in the first half, Mayfield was asked if there was one missed opportunity that stood out to him.
"I mean late in the game- Might as well just forward the fine letter. We asked the ref on the sideline how the hell he missed that call. I mean, they're shoving Donovan Peoples-Jones out of bounds and then Higgy (Rashard Higgins) gets grabbed, so there's two PIs on one play. They don't call it. We shouldn't have been in that position like I said.
We left too many points on the field in the first half. That's very frustrating. We didn't do our job enough to just take the ball game away and we left in the hands of someone else. So we gotta be better on that."
In the case of Garrett, he was asked specifically about the fourth down pass interference call on corner A.J. Green on wide receiver Mike Williams.
"It was terrible. I mean, you've seen seen pictures, you've seen videos. It was a terrible call. It is what it is. Refs are humans and they make mistakes, but we get held to a high standard and high degree of excellence and so should they."
The key difference here is that Garrett was asked specifically about his opinion of a call whereas Mayfield took an open ended-question and decided to use that to critique the officials. That might have an impact on how the NFL decides to handle each situation, but they don't take kindly to criticisms from players on officiating, regardless of how accurate they might be.
The NFL will review the game as well as the comments and potentially hand down fines and explanations as they deem fit.
Unfortunately for the NFL, back to back games with just the Chargers have major issues when it comes to officiating, which is never where they want the focus to be. The league office will decide how much merit that is to these complaints, but even if they feel like the comments by both Mayfield and Garrett were correct, they aren't going to go reverse the game's outcome.
So even as fans, both of the Browns and of the game in general might agree with everything they said, that's about the extent of it.
The Browns are still 3-2 and will now have to host the Arizona Cardinals, who are the league's lone undefeated team.
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