Sean Payton rips NFL officials, compares them to high school refs

Sean Payton was very unhappy with the officiating in Sunday’s game between the Saints and Panthers. So unhappy, in fact, that he implied a crew of high school referees could have done a better job.

More specifically, Payton was furious over what he thought were multiple missed calls where Carolina had 12 men on the field and in the huddle before plays.

“I’m not going to get into the officiating,” he said Sunday night, according to Katherine Terrell of NOLA.com. “I said walking into this door I was not going to get into it. And it happened twice, 12 men on the field, clearly, and they’re getting that right on Friday nights.”

Payton was understandably frustrated after a heartbreaking 41-38 loss, but that doesn’t mean he had cooled down less than 24 hours later. On Monday, Payton told reporters that he placed a phone call to the league office.

“It’s three different times it’s 12 guys when they break the huddle. And that’s just one part of it,” he said. “One of the things that I try to do here, and we’ve talked about it, we don’t come in on Mondays and have angst half the day about calls. Today was one of those mornings where someone sent me the TV copy. And you’ve got to be able to get that.”

Payton said the Panthers were guilty of 12-men penalties three times — once in the first quarter, again in the third quarter when Carolina was at the New Orleans 1-yard line, and a third time on the game-winning drive.

“And then the third time around it happens in the final game-winning drive,” Payton said. “They break the huddle and then player 12 continues off to the sideline. There’s a lot of challenges that causes when you’re trying to play defense and you’re trying to play coverage.”

Bad officiating? In the NFL? If we go ahead and pretend that this little embarrassing situation and about a dozen others this season never happened, we could hardly believe it.