Sean Payton opens up about why he left the Saints (merged)

Bill said

I don't understand the rift between the Saints fans & Bill Vinovich. He was not the culprit of the NFC Championship game. That was Gary Cavaletto. Vinovich was not in a position to make or adjust the call by the side judge Cavaletto. And there was no option for a review at the time. Vinovich had no choice but to allow the play to continue as called by his fellow official. :shrug:

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Oh, I can explain that one. My beef with him is after the game he hemmed and hawed about "I didn't see the play" when asked about it even though photographs show he had a clear view of the play. He wasn't the closest ref, but he most definitely had a clear view of what happened.

You are correct that Gary Cavaletto and the timid ref who looked like he wanted to throw a flag and let Cavaletoo overrule him were the closest to the play and the ones who bear the MOST responsibility.

But I think Vinovich is a coward and a liar based on his post-game presser. As a counterpoint, there was a baseball game (before they instituted replay) where Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga was one out away from a perfect game. There's a close play at first base and Jim Joyce called the runner safe. Replays showed Joyce was wrong. At the post-game presser when asked about it Joyce basically said "It's my job to get that call right and I didn't. This should've been one of the best days of that young man's life and I ruined it and that's going to bother me for a long time." Joyce then went to the Tigers' locker room to apologize to Galarraga personally. That's how a man handles it when he makes a mistake.

If Vinovich said, "Sometimes refs miss calls just like kickers sometimes miss extra points or wide open receivers drop a pass" I'm not saying it would've made everything okay, but I think the anger would've been lessened somewhat. B/c yeah, even sometimes even Morten Andersen would miss an extra point when it was only 20 yards away. But there wasn't even an ounce of humility or accountability from those refs.