Referee for Broncos wild-card game will dredge up bad memories

The referee choices for next weekend’s wild-card round were announced by the NFL on Monday, and the selection for the Denver Broncos’ game could induce indigestion in both Sean Payton and Broncos fans.

Longtime NFL referee Bill Vinovich drew the assignment for the game. It will be his first Broncos playoff game in a dozen years and his first postseason game involving Payton in six years.

In each instance, the previous encounters rank among the most bitter defeats in both Broncos history and Payton’s career.

That most-recent Broncos playoff game officiated by Vinovich was, of course, the divisional-round loss to the Baltimore Ravens in which the late Jacoby Jones caught a 70-yard touchdown pass from Joe Flacco to force overtime. Justin Tucker’s 47-yard field goal ended matters in double overtime; the kick came six plays after Corey Graham posted his second interception of the day off Peyton Manning.

Denver was whistled for 87 yards on 10 infractions that day, compared with Baltimore’s 56 yards on eight penalties. As I wrote after the game, some questionable calls were part of the stew of woe that boiled over for the Broncos that day, ending their Super Bowl hopes for the 2012 season:

And then there were the inconsistencies from Bill Vinovich’s officiating crew, which even [the] restrained Tony Dungy criticized via Twitter. There was a pass-interference non-call on Chykie Brown that was missed; that allowed Corey Graham to intercept a deflected Manning pass and return it 39 yards for a touchdown.

A call against [Champ] Bailey in overtime kept a Ravens drive alive, costing the Broncos field position for their ensuing possession.

This doesn’t even encapsulate the holds of Elvis Dumervil that went undetected, and the holding call against Chris Kuper that should never have been whistled.

The Broncos are 5-10 in games officiated by Vinovich. Sean Payton-led teams are 7-5, including the Broncos’ Nov. 13, 2023 win at Buffalo. But perhaps the most crushing loss of Payton’s head-coaching career came in the 2018 NFC Championship Game that Vinovich not only refereed — but his crew helped decide.

With 1:49 left in regulation, New Orleans in third-and-10 at the Los Angeles 13-yard line and the game tied at 20-apiece, Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman slammed into Saints wide receiver Tommylee Lewis well before Drew Brees’ pass arrived.

Had interference been called, the Saints could have drained all but approximately 1 to 5 seconds of the remaining time before kicking a game-winning field goal, as the Rams were down to just one timeout. Instead, the Rams had time to respond to Wil Lutz’s 31-yard field goal by marching to a game-tying field goal of their own, then won it in overtime after intercepting Drew Brees, setting up Greg Zeuerlein’s game-winning field goal.

Payton had a subequent conversation with Al Riveron, then the NFL’s senior vice president of officiating, about the call.

“He was brutally honest (about the blown call),” Payton said a week-and-a-half after the loss. “That came from him directly and then after that briefly on Monday, and Tuesday I spoke with Troy (Vincent) and Roger (Goodell) and it was just brief.”

“… My discussions briefly on Monday and Tuesday with the commissioner and with Troy were relative to just not any type of reversal or anything like that. It was just simply the play and any statement. There’s tons of people that reach out to you. You receive a ton of text messages and emails. You’re appreciative of all that and then you just want to disappear into your cave for a while.”

For Payton, that cave involved a three-day binge on Netflix and Jeni’s Ice Cream.

One hopes that for the Broncos and Payton, the appearance of a Vinovich-led crew doesn’t put them in a similar place this time.