Rams receiver Puka Nacua may soon be hearing from the league office.<\/p>\n
Via Sarah Barshop of ESPN.com, Nacua recently made critical comments about NFL game officials during a livestream with two guys who have never been in my kitchen<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe refs are the worst<\/a>,\u201d Nacua said. \u201cThese guys are lawyers. They want to be on TV, too. . . . You don\u2019t think he\u2019s texting his friends in the group chat like, \u2018Yo, you guys just saw me on \u201cSunday Night Football.\u201d LIke, \u2018That wasn\u2019t P.I., like, but I called it.\u2019 . . . I mean, these guys are normal human beings, too.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the hosts mentioned that Nacua could be fined for saying what he said. \u201cA hundred percent,\u201d Nacua said.<\/p>\n Nacua made his comments in a lighthearted way, but he said what he said. Starting with, \u201cThe refs are the worst.\u201d<\/p>\n The NFL has fined multiple players in the past for criticizing officials. Earlier this year, the league fined Texans running back Joe Mixon $25,000 for something he didn\u2019t say<\/a> \u2014 and then they tried to fine him for something he did say<\/a>. (It didn\u2019t stick.)<\/p>\n The sensitivity to criticism serves only to highlight the basis for the criticism. The officials make mistakes. And the league far too often opts for secrecy, not transparency, when mistakes are made.<\/p>\n The effort to circle the wagons by imposing fines on those who question the officiating serves only to increase suspicions for some regarding the possibility that the mistakes aren\u2019t really mistakes. It\u2019s one of the reasons the league hated gambling, before it realized how much money could be made from it.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the practical impact of Nacua\u2019s criticism. Starting tomorrow night, we\u2019ll all find out whether and to what extent he\u2019ll get calls from any of the folks he has told the world are \u201cthe worst.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rams receiver Puka Nacua may soon be hearing from the league office. Via Sarah Barshop of ESPN.com, Nacua…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-354771","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}