The New England Patriots pulled one of the upsets of the 2023 NFL season in Week 7, upsetting the Buffalo Bills 29-25. On Monday morning after the game, Pats head coach Bill Belichick talked about the stirring win, but he also took the opportunity to complain about the NFL officiating in the game by referee Clete Blakeman and his crew.
During the game at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, the NFL referees threw multiple flags that ended with the officials not actually calling a penalty. Belichick thought that was odd and made a point of calling it out the next morning.
“You’d have to ask Clete about some of those,” Belichick said via a video conference. “Throwing flags, picking them up, throwing them late and whatever. It was just kind of an unusual game the way some of the penalties were called all the way around.”
“The obvious question is if (a flag) gets picked up, why’d you throw it in the first place?” Belichick added. “I don’t know. You’d have to ask them that.”
While Clete Blakeman and company may have made for a strange and stilted game, the penalties (more or less) evened out in the end. The Patriots ended the day with eight penalties for 59 yards in Week 7, while the Bills finished with nine for 46 yards.
Bill Belichick and the Patriots weren’t the only team left pondering NFL officiating after Week 7. There were a lot of questionable calls around the league during this slate, including two questionable late calls on Indianapolis Colts cornerback Darrell Baker that gifted the game to the Cleveland Browns.
The league has not commented on the overall officiating or Belichick’s comments on it as of early Monday afternoon.