Trey McBride said please, and a line judge cursed at him twice anyway, and the only reason anyone outside East Rutherford knows that is a CBS camera happened to be pointed at the official’s mouth. That’s the actual story here, more than the missed call itself. The NFL confirmed it’s reviewing line judge Jeff Seeman, a 25-year veteran, for appearing to tell McBride “f*** you” not once but twice during the fourth quarter of Sunday’s loss to the Giants in East Rutherford.
Nobody reviews that without the footage. That’s the second layer, and it’s worse than the curse words.
The play itself, for the three people who haven’t seen the clip: third-and-2, under five minutes left, Cardinals down and trying to extend a drive. Giants defensive back Dru Phillips made contact with McBride before the ball from Jacoby Brissett even arrived, and no flag came out. McBride, understandably, went to go make his case to the official standing right there. CBS sideline reporter Aditi Kinkhabwala later said the worst thing she actually heard him say was “You’re ruining the game.” He said please while he was at it.
He got cursed at twice for that.
McBride’s crime was pleading his case calmly about a no-call that replay made look pretty generous to the Giants. He clocked the camera mid-exchange, turned, pointed at it, and laughed — the most Cardinals thing that’s happened all season, catching the one break nobody in Arizona ever catches.
I’ve watched enough Cardinals football to know what a no-call in a close fourth quarter does to a sideline, and I still can’t get over how calm McBride looks in that clip compared to the guy holding the flag.
NFLPA executive director JC Tretter didn’t let the league sit on this one quietly either. “This kind of behavior from an official towards a player is unacceptable,” he said. “Players are consistently held accountable when the roles are reversed. We expect the NFL to hold officials to the same standard.”
That’s not a throwaway statement from a union guy covering his members — it’s a pointed comparison, and it’s accurate. A player mouths off to an official and gets flagged on the spot, fined soon after, with the dollar figure public before his next practice. An official curses at a player on a national broadcast and the NFL’s response is “we’re looking into it,” which is the same sentence the league used when it was quietly closing the book on a training camp injury complaint nobody was still asking about.
https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/status/2106887367835668600
The timing isn’t a coincidence. The NFL doesn’t have a standing mechanism that catches a blown or biased no-call and asks the official to explain himself afterward — it has a mechanism that catches footage going viral and asks the official to explain himself afterward. Those are different systems, and only one of them has ever been triggered here. If CBS’s broadcast camera happens to be on a different angle in that exact window, Seeman has a quiet Monday and McBride has a worse Sunday he can’t do anything about.
https://twitter.com/iliketofootball/status/2106836545798090910
None of this needed a flag to be officiating malpractice. It’s the same instinct that let a graze on Mahomes draw a flag last week while a flattening hit on a rookie drew nothing. The league polices what it’s embarrassed by, not what it’s wrong about.
The NFL hasn’t announced any discipline for Seeman, and there’s no indication yet that it will. The Cardinals lost 36-24 anyway, on a pick-six as time expired, which feels almost beside the point now.
He said please. The camera did more than the whistle ever did.
