The NFL isn’t messing around when it comes to behavior toward game officials. With an asterisk.
Albert Breer of SI.com reports that the NFL has fined Patriots coach Mike Vrabel, Jets coach Aaron Glenn, and Eagles coach Nick Sirianni $250,000 each for conduct toward game officials.
The discipline may be more performative that substantive. Breer explains that “the fines are in abeyance, meaning they’d be on hold, and could be repealed with good behavior.”
It’s not entirely clear where things stand, and what it would take to avoid the fines. Also, the amounts are borderline cartoonish. In 2012, former Patriots coach Bill Belichick was fined only $50,000 for confronting and grabbing the arm of a replacement official. Recently, 49ers owner Jed York was fined a mere $500,000 to go along with a six-game suspension after a prostitution-related arrest.
These fines seem over the top, especially since the specific behavior that prompted the fines has not been identified.
In Week 4, Vrabel was flagged for his comments to an official after a disputed call. “I told him it was a terrible — I’m not going to say effing — call,” Vrabel said after the game. “I’ve said that 87 times since I’ve been a head coach. It was nothing derogatory. You’d have to ask him. I think he was a little sensitive.”
The league was more than a little sensitive. But it’s not as if the $250,000 will be collected. All in all, it feels like an olive branch to the NFL Referees Association, after a pair of suspensions were imposed on officials for interactions with players in Week 5.