Ravens vs Jaguars Final Score: No suspension coming for officials

Even though the NFL admitted openly that it's officials had messed up and caused the Ravens to lose the game against the Jaguars, they won't do anything about it. I'm not even talking about stripping away a win from the Jaguars because that is never going to happen and it shouldn't. I'm talking about repercussions for the officials that screwed up.

The league acknowledged on Monday that the officials had made an error, missing the obvious false start on the final play of the game, causing a 10-second runoff of the clock that would have ended the game, giving the Ravens a 20-19 victory. Instead, the play was allowed to go on. Ravens outside linebacker Elvis Dumervil ended up grabbing quarterback Blake Bortles' facemask, resulting in a free play for the Jaguars as well as an additional 15-yards. The penalty allowed the Jaguars to attempt a 53-yard field goal that would be good, giving the Jags a 22-20 win over the Ravens, pushing them to 2-7 on the season.

According to Kevin Seifert of ESPN, the league is not expected to issue any suspensions for the officials. Suspension of officials are incredibly rare, but the NFL does occasionally reassign officiating crews to lesser games as a form of punishment. It is possible that Pete Morelli's crew will be reassigned to a lesser game for week 11, but we won't know until the day of the games as the NFL doesn't release that information beforehand.

While judgement errors do happen for officials and are a part of the game, the NFL needs to reevaluate it's stance on suspensions and fines for officials as the overall quality of the officials has been at a low this season. Between the indecision on what is a catch along with several administrative errors that resulted in a suspension of side judge Rob Vernatchi just last month.

The big question asked by fans is that NFL players are fined for split second judgement calls on their hits and thing that are out of their physical control at times. Yet the officials, arguably in a more important role for player safety, have been allowed to get away with terrible performances like the one on Sunday all without a fine or real punishment. The obvious answer is that the NFL has difficulty finding replacement referees as it is, but a true program to train new officials and cycle in good ones in replacement of bad ones would be something that should have happened years ago. Now that officials are asked to not only watch the game itself and make judgement calls, keep the clock on track and also keep an eye out for player safety in the way of penalties and concussions; it makes more sense than ever to continue to try and improve the officials through punishment and reward.