The Cowboys and Packers game was one of the worst officiated games all season

The Dallas Cowboys lost to the Green Bay Packers.

In fact, the Dallas Cowboys got destroyed for the Green Bay Packers. Sure they made it interesting in the second half, but overall the Cowboys were outdone by their longtime rival in every conceivable way. At one point they trailed 31-3 for goodness sake.

Nobody is saying that the Cowboys were robbed or that if [insert hypothetical here] happened that Sunday’s result would have been any different. Please be clear on that. All of that being said, the game that Dallas played against Green Bay on Sunday was one of the more poorly officiated that we’ve seen in some time.

Where do we even start with the atrocious penalties? They were done both ways here, it’s not like Dallas or Green Bay only benefited from improper calls. The NFL has a serious problem here and its damaging to their product, plus they are starting to negatively influence the game that is being played.

The missed illegal contact penalty against Michael Gallup

Dallas had one of the more dramatic touchdowns ever when they had two penalties keep one of their drives late in the game alive. They managed to have a fumble and interception overturned by penalty, but on the possession after that an even more egregious penalty was committed.

How is this missed? Michael Gallup is getting manhandled. This is the textbook definition of illegal contact yet somehow, someway, there was no flag thrown. What on earth?

The awful roughing the passer penalty that helped Dallas

As mentioned, there were calls that benefited both the Cowboys and Packers. The one above was a non-call, but the one right here was called shortly after that and wow, it was bad. In no way is this roughing the passer.

The NFL is hyper focused on protecting the game’s quarterbacks, but give me a break. Defenders aren’t being given a chance to do anything because even coming close to quarterbacks - that’s literally what happened here - is apparently a penalty.

The unbelievable unsportsmanlike conduct penalty against Jason Garrett

The most egregious penalty issue from Sunday’s game (it was hard to pick one, believe me) came against Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett.

In sequence: Amari Cooper caught a pass, it was ruled incomplete, video showed that it was clearly a challenge, Jason Garrett vocalized that he wanted to challenge it (perhaps a bit aggressively to be fair), it was reviewed, the call was overturned, Garrett was penalized for the language that he used.

The Cowboys were in the middle of trying to come back at this point (it wasn’t necessarily inconceivable at that point which is important context) so the catch that Cooper made was critical. Jason Garrett was obviously stressed as the very state of the game and that’s where the vocal aggressiveness against the official seemed to come from.

Let’s be clear about something here: If the official had called the play correctly then none of this would have ever happened. The whole ordeal was a result of the official doing their job incorrectly.

That’s such an important point when you think about it. Jason Garrett had to challenge the play because the official made such a glaring error. Why should he have been penalized for doing what was literally necessary in order to make sure the proper result was achieved?

Apparently that wasn’t enough for Referee Ron Torbert. After the game the official was asked why Jason Garrett was given a flag for unsportsmanlike conduct and responded.

“It was for abusive language toward an official.”

Torbert added:

”All I can tell you is there was abusive language toward an official. That’s all I’m prepared to tell you.”

This is so ridiculous when you really think about it. Imagine a student having to protest that their exam was graded incorrectly and as a result of petitioning that ultimately lost points for making the petition in the first place.

Sunday was a really bad day for the Dallas Cowboys. It was arguably a worse day for the officials.