Football is a violent, physical sport built on collisions between giant men with rare, almost impossible athletic traits. But it’s also an imperfect game, from the players to the officials. Mistakes happen because the sport demands that officials track 22 players moving at full speed, with decisive moments unfolding in a fraction of a second.
That constant chaos makes it easy for even the most experienced crews to miss obvious calls, and that is part of the human aspect of the game. However, it has been astonishing to witness how many holding penalties on Micah Parsons have gone uncalled over the last few weeks.
There was a sequence in Sunday’s game against the Chicago Bears where the referees ruled an incomplete pass by Caleb Williams, even though the ball never hit the ground, and Evan Williams came out with it after a mid-play scramble. Parsons then got blatantly held on the next two snaps, but it didn’t matter because Chicago ended up punting.
The Bears went the entire afternoon without being penalized once for holding Parsons, despite multiple reps that pushed the limit and drew Matt LaFleur’s attention. LaFleur didn’t want to turn his postgame comments into an officiating rant, but his tone made it clear he disagreed with how those situations were handled.
“I’m not going to get into what we were talking about,” LaFleur said after the game. “Officials, I don’t think that their jobs are easy by any stretch. I think it is a difficult job, but I guess I don’t know what holding is anymore because I thought that was a pretty clear and obvious hold, but I guess I don’t know what that means.”
Pressed on what Parsons has to do to finally draw a holding flag, LaFleur pointed back to one moment that stood out to him during the game.
“I guess, I don’t know. I thought there was one that certainly was questionable, to say the least,” LaFleur noted. “But apparently the officials disagreed. So it is what it is, and we’ve just got to continue to strain and fight and try to get to the quarterback.”
People have argued that there’s at least one hold on every snap, and that’s true across all 32 teams. But a player like Parsons is always going to draw extra attention. He’s a rare athlete in a tier of his own with Myles Garrett, and blockers know they have to do whatever they can to slow him down. Even so, opponents are getting away with holding him far too often, and it has become a source of frustration for Parsons and the Packers.
“I’m immune. I just gotta keep fighting through. I mean, that’s been the definition of my career,” Parsons said after Green Bay’s 28-21 win over Chicago. “The rule book is they gotta be in the chest area, and I’m just not getting grabbed in the chest area, there’s nothing I can do about it, and just keep fighting.”
Parsons isn’t going to get every call; that’s just how the NFL works. From a business perspective, the league knows it can’t stop the game every 15 seconds for a flag. Whether fans like it or not, the NFL is a business, and stopping the action that often would make for a bad product. The league is always looking to expand its viewership, and a choppy, constantly interrupted broadcast doesn’t help achieve that.
Yes, plenty of egregious calls get missed. But the idea that officials are corrupt doesn’t hold up. Every team in the league deals with bad calls going both for and against them every single week. The job itself is extremely difficult — officials are trying to track 22 players moving at full speed, and they’re doing it without the benefit of being full-time NFL employees who can dedicate their entire year to training and preparation.
With all that in mind, the Packers still need to make sure the league hears about the missed calls on Parsons, because those moments can come back to haunt a team in January. Nobody in Wisconsin would be happy if something preventable cost them when it matters most.