Super Bowl referee calls Saints-Texans opener the ‘toughest officiating assignment’ in 20 years

NEW ORLEANS -- The last game John Parry officiated before he retired from the NFL was the most recent Super Bowl.

The game came two weeks after the missed pass interference penalty many believe kept the New Orleans Saints from reaching the Super Bowl. Now, Parry is an ESPN officiating analyst, and he’ll be in the broadcast booth for the first Monday Night Football game Sept. 9 between the Saints and visiting Houston Texans.

“From my perspective,” he said during an ESPN conference call Wednesday, "it’s probably the toughest officiating assignment that I’m aware of in 20 years.”

Parry, 54, told TheMMQB.com in June he felt added pressure to call a flawless Super Bowl last February after the missed calls from the NFC championship, when the Rams’ Nickell Robey-Coleman crashed into Saints receiver Tommylee Lewis inside the 10. A penalty would have given the Saints a first down with a chance to leave little time on the clock after a go-ahead field goal or touchdown.

To prepare for the Super Bowl, the 19-year NFL officiating veteran showed his crew of officials military videos to emphasize how “we are under attack. We will fight back. And we will come out swinging,” he told TheMMQB.com.

But what puts more pressure on the Saints-Texans officials is the surrounding. 

In a separate phone interview after the conference call, Parry noted how the Super Bowl game is played before a mostly corporate crowd. 

That will not be the case in the Monday night opener.

"I don't recall in 12 years as a crew chief having to prepare for the fans, the Dome, the noise, the response, what I would guess would be a not-so-warm welcome," Parry said. "New Orleans is a passionate city. The fans, it will be an emotional game. They really haven't received the resolution they're satisfied with."

Parry called the Saints-Texans matchup a "personality game." The league needs a "blue-collar crew" that will call the game efficiently, he said.

NFC championship game officials missed two calls on the controversial play, Parry said during the ESPN conference call. Officials missed what should have been pass interference as well as the helmet-to-helmet contact initiated by Robey-Coleman.

Officials calling the Saints-Texans game in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome will draw more scrutiny from the pro-New Orleans crowd as well as anyone watching the national television broadcast.

Parry learned from his father -- Dave was an official with Super Bowl experience -- that the job of an official is to go unnoticed.

“When they notice you, you have worked a poor football game,” he said during the conference call. “Make the calls, make the calls correct, be expeditious with what you announce and how you enforce. I think I did. I stayed under the radar. I wasn’t enamored with wearing a white hat and spending 20, 30 seconds with an announcement; certainly bang those out pretty quickly.”

Yet Parry also could understand how those crucial NFC championship calls were missed.

Parry explained how the primary officials involved in the missed call each had different assignments at the moment the play began.

For instance, the back judge began by watching the middle of the field to watch for defensive holding. The deep side judge on that play began by watching the widest receiver on that play. The line judge began by watching the linemen for offside, encroachment, false-start and illegal formation infractions.

After the snap, the line judge watches a particular zone in the field. In this case, the zone was where Lewis came from out of the backfield on a wheel route and got knocked to the turf by Robey-Coleman.

By Parry’s estimate, “all three sets of eyes got there a little bit late,” he said.

“Was it pass interference? Absolutely. Was it helmet to helmet contact? Absolutely,” Parry said. “Was it as easy (to call as it looked) with hindsight-20/20 vision? No. Because nobody started there (and) nobody ended there.”

According to Parry, “if an official were able to start and end with (his eyes on) that running back, I guarantee we would actually have gotten both fouls."

The missed call led to a rule change spearheaded by Saints coach Sean Payton and team owner Gayle Benson. For this season on a trial basis, coaches can challenge pass interference calls and non-calls. The rule will be reviewed next off-season.

Parry said he was "cautiously optimistic" about the rule change.

"We had three weeks, excluding a few plays -- maybe two or three -- where I'd say maybe the outcome should have been different," he said.

Even so, Parry gave the league "high marks" for agreeing on a high standard for an on-field call to be overturned.

When Payton challenged a defensive pass interference penalty in the preseason opener against the Minnesota Vikings, he thought, "Man, it was pretty clear to me at least, that it was just hand swiping," he said Tuesday. Although he lost the challenge, Payton said replay officials showed they "were going to be very conservative in overturning calls."

For a network to have an in-booth officials expert is nothing new. Other networks have done it for years. ESPN had Jerry Austin as an officials expert for several years and Jeff Triplette had the job last season “and helped us more so off-air than on-air,” ESPN Monday Night Football producer Jay Rothman said during the teleconference.

Now, the job belongs to Parry, whose best hope for his former officiating colleagues would be for them to remain anonymous. That’s all Parry wanted during his nearly two decades in the NFL.