NFL Fans: Are You Ready for Some Replacement Refs?

Are you ready for some...replacement refs?!

NFL fans, get ready for a redo of 2012. Get ready for more replacement refs in the biggest league in America. Get ready for awful calls and game-changing misses.

Because, the NFL owners are again being cheap and hurting the game of football in order to save a dime.

Replacement Refs Are Looking More and More Likely

Three weeks ago at the owners meetings, the NFL put in a contingency in the case they can't reach a labor agreement with officials. It allows the league office to fix calls the replacement officials miss. Not only for ejections and truly egregious actions, but for typical foul calls, too.

Now, the NFL has informed teams the replacement refs have begun onboarding.

The NFL's ownership looks continually greedier and cheaper as time goes on.

Forcing replacement referees back on the league would be bad for the NFL, its fans, and the safety of the players.

But the owners don't seem to care about all that. As long as they can save a buck.

The Last Time the NFL had Replacement Refs, It was a Disaster

We have to rewind all the way back to 2012 for the last time replacement refs—I can hear my old buddy Terry Frei saying "officials," yes, I know Terry, but the alliteration sounds better—were employed by the NFL.

And it was a complete disaster.

Just like today, the NFL Referees Association and the league's Collective Bargaining Agreement expired. The two sides actually have until May 31 to get a new deal done, but the league's showing they're going full steam ahead with replacement refs yet again.

Back in 2012, the NFL replacement refs were sourced from the Arena Football League, Legends League, Lingerie Football League, and even from high school games. They couldn't use Division I college officials because those leagues forbade them from moonlighting. So, the replacement refs that the NFL used were completely in over their heads, and the games suffered.

Those replacement refs worked a mere three weeks into the 2012 season before the league pulled the plug and finally got a deal done with their typical officials.

During those three weeks of replacement refs in 2012 we saw a ton of issues, including:

• A 6-minute delay in the Broncos-Falcons game in Week 2 following a fumble. Both John Fox and DC Jack Del Rio were fined for verbally abusing officials. Three plays overturned due to poor calls.
• An official had to be pulled from a game Panthers-Saints just before it kicked off because his Facebook showed him being a Saints fan.
• In Week 3 the 49ers were awarded two extra timeouts when they challenged twice, and even won the challenge, on a fumble in the fourth quarter.
• Darius Hayward-Bey was knocked out by a helmet-to-helmet hit that wasn't penalized.
• The Ravens game-winning field goal went over an upright, prompting Bill Belichick to grab an official's arm as he asked it be reviewed. The play wasn't reviewable, and he was fined $50,000.
• The "Fail Mary": Golden Tate of the Seattle Seahawks pushed off a Green Bay Packers defender, caught the game-winning touchdown, but it should've been waived off due to offensive pass interference.

Ultimately, the Fail Mary was the straw that broke the camel's back for the NFL.

It was an embarrassing catastrophe that happened on Monday Night Football, with the whole world watching.

Five days later, the NFL and NFLRA agreed to their new deal.

And considering the new ability for the NFL office, aka New York, to change calls during game, the league is expecting there to be more missed calls this time around, too.

5 reasons replacement refs are terrible for the NFL

1. Player safety: It will be placed on the back burner. Division I, II, and III refs have never called games with players at the caliber or speed with which we see NFL players play. People will be injured, players won't be penalized, and that will perpetuate more violent hits because players will see they can get away with them.
2. A rigged NFL?: Conspiracy theorists are increasingly calling the league rigged, and these replacement refs will not help those accusations go away. They'll only ramp up under replacement refs and their inconsistencies.
3. Betting: Speaking of rigged; back in 2012 there wasn't legal gambling. Now there is. It will only bring more questions into the league surrounding whether or not officials have money on the games they're calling.
4. Wrong calls, slowing down game play: We're going to see a lot of penalties missed and called wrong. Then, we're going to get stoppages in games as New York phones in to tell the refs how they screwed up. Which will only slow games down even more. They're already 3-and-a-half hours long.
5. NFL credibility, product weakened: Ultimately, the product on the field will suffer with replacement refs and it will hurt the credibility and end product of the league. The NFL would rather gamble that they can get the NFLRA to sign a deal by hiring scabs than even negotiate in good faith. From the aforementioned NY Times article: "[NFLRA executive director Scott ]Green said in a statement that the NFL ended what were supposed to be two days of negotiations after “less than a half day of talks.”"

NFL's Officials are Overall Good, but Should Be Full-Time to be Great

All football fans can point to poor officiating at some point.

Hell, last year I wrote a lengthy piece about how bad the officiating in the NFL was last year, with many specific examples.

The thing is, the current NFL refs are better—far, far better—than any replacement refs.

That's because the current officials have the training, experience, and knowledge to call the game better than a Division I, II, or III official, which is where the league will get its scabs from.

Seemingly, the only way for NFL officials to take the next step and become truly great is to become full-time employees. One would think the league being cheap—not wanting to play for healthcare benefits etc.—is why current NFL officials are part-time. But, no!

The league is actually negotiating and wanting officials to be full-time. The NFLRA is the group who is staunchly opposed.

Why?

It's probably because NFL officials were paid an average of $385,000 in 2025. That's around six years of a regular, middle class person's pay! And yet they're making nearly 400 grand a year for a part-time job.

Sounds pretty cushy, eh?

Where the league is being "cheap" here is they are offering the NFL Referees Association an annual raise from 5.75% per year to 6.45% per the New York Times. While the NFLRA wants 10% increases year-over-year.

Personally, I almost always side with the labor force and unions over the owners. The laborers are the only reason the business can exist. They perform the job, the owners just sit back and collect checks. Especially when you consider the NFL's a $23 billion business.

The officials deserve a raise, and even at 10% increases per year, we're talking pennies to the NFL. At that aforementioned $385,000 average, with 121 officials, it's $46.5M per year the league is paying officials.

That's .002%, or two one-hundredths of a percent, of the league's yearly revenue. 11 different current players make as much or more per year than it would be to pay all 121 officials.

One thing I will say about the officials though; they need to agree to go to full-time. No football fans, many of whom are making less than $60,000 per year, are going to feel empathetic to part-time officials—who the fans already hate—making 400k a year. And then making more, and more as time goes on.

Full-time officials means they can come together and train every week, even in the offseason. They can watch more film. Learn from their mistakes. Perfect their craft.

Instead, many of them are lawyers, business owners, etc. etc. full time, and then ref part time on the side.

A lot of us have to work multiple jobs to survive. $385,000 a year would be enough to allow our significant others to stay home, to buy summer houses, to travel across the globe with ease.

The refs treating these highly important positions as part-time jobs is a bad look on the officials. Simple as that.

How Will 2026 NFL Season be Affected?

If I had a guess, and considering how it went down 14 years ago, I'd say we'll see a similar outcome this year as back then.

Around the quarter-point mark of the season—weeks 4-5ish—the league and the NFLRA will come to a deal.

That's because I foresee many officiating issues just like the last time. It may not be a "Fail Mary" game, but there will be enough issues and pressure on the league that they'll have to settle.

Similarly, a month out of work will push the officials to want to settle as well.

The 17-game regular season, and shortened 3-game preseason, has already hurt early-season NFL games. The first two weeks already feel like preseason now more than regular season games. The players are rustier and the games are worse overall.

So, the league is probably fine with that first month of the season being a mess with replacement refs, anyway.

If it goes on past that, the product on the field will suffer a lot and it'll likely turn off some fans, both casual and die-hard NFL fans.

And imagine if a starting quarterback or other superstar is injured due to the awful officiating. Or if a team misses the playoffs by one game, losing due to missed calls early in the season.

People are going to be pissed off.

All for a few hundredths of a percent of the annual league revenue.

It's all about the Benjamins, baby. For Roger Goodell and the NFL owners, that is.

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Rich Kurtzman was born and raised in Denver Colorado and attended Colorado State University in Fort Collins in the aughts. He's been a professional writer since 2011, covering Colorado State football and men's basketball, as well as the Denver Broncos, for many outlets. Current Denver Broncos work can be found on Mile High Sports. Previous credits include CBS Denver and The USA TODAY Sports Media Group.