Bill Vinovich has not officiated a Saints game since the "no-call". Are there other officials who do not officiate certain teams?
I hear what you're saying about it not being his call, but that was a penalty so obvious and flagrant on both the pass interference and unnecessary roughness level that yellow flags should have rained in from all directions. BV did have an unobstructed view of the play from a very favorable vantage to see the hit well before the ball arrived. I don't know the rules, but could he have called a ref huddle to discuss? It's not officially his call, but he could've righted the wrong. He's not blameless, IMO.
As I have stated many times since that horrendous call... The biggest mistake by the NFL was to put a 'dream team' of officials together to call a football game rather than to use an entire well-graded
crew who were used to working together to officiate the playoff games. It can be nearly impossible in the spur of the moment for all these senior officials to overrule the calls of each other even if one may possibly have the authority to do so.
Even if he suspected the defender was early, Vinovich was much farther from that infraction and he knew that it was Cavaletto's call to make. If instead that play had an obvious 'illegal hands to the face' penalty by a defensive lineman, you would have expected
Vinovich to make
that call because it would have occurred in the part of the field that he was assigned to officiate. I doubt seriously that you would have had Cavaletto run over to Vinovich and say,
"You missed an obvious hands to the face penalty on the defense." The infamous 'no-call' just wasn't Vinovich's call to make.
What bothers me the most about the 'butthurt' feelings of the fans is that they are allowing the
popular opinion to do all their thinking for them. Statistically Vinovich is still one of the best NFL officials in the game. I'd rather have him calling our games than a lot of the blunderers I've seen slinging flags around the field. I believe with all my heart that if the rule had been in place to review such questionable PI rulings that Vinovich would have called for such. Instead he was put in the difficult situation of having to challenge another senior official whose position on the field made it
his job to make the proper call.
Cavaletto failed, not Vinovich. Just because the head official is the guy with the open mic and communicates the information to all the spectators doesn't mean that he necessarily agrees with all the calls that are made.