During a pregame meeting in 2022, Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin asked the officiating crew a question that had been bugging him.
So, who’s in charge here?

As one crew member recalls, Tomlin asked who in the league office was responsible for answering his questions about officiating decisions and who made the final decisions on replay reviews. “I have no idea,” the official told Tomlin that day. “I can’t tell you who’s the boss or who’s not. It’s been so secretive, and they’re just not very forthcoming.”
Tomlin shrugged. There was a game to play.
Last month, NFL teams received a long-awaited memo announcing structural changes to the league’s officiating department: two vice president hires and the addition of three former officials to the department’s staff, “as part of our ongoing Officiating Improvement Plan.” The memo, obtained by The Athletic, listed the new hires and described their qualifications but didn’t explain the plan’s details. In a separate statement announcing the hires to the public, Senior VP of officiating administration Perry Fewell referenced the plan but was light on specifics.

The NFL declined to comment on the record, but the “improvement plan” for the league’s officiating office is at least an admission that something is wrong, which comes as no surprise to those who have worked there.
“The officiating department is totally underfunded and understaffed,” said Scott Green, a former NFL official with 22 years experience, including nine as a referee, and the current executive director of the NFL Referee Association (NFLRA), the officials’ union. “A nuisance to the NFL,” is how one former official describes it. “A necessary evil,” another said. “Whether it’s hubris, naivete, ignorance, there’s a belief that anybody can officiate with training.” The league’s collective bargaining agreement with the NFLRA prevents current officials from talking to reporters, and three current referees declined to comment for this story. The Athletic spoke to 10 former officials, nine of whom worked for the NFL during most recent department leader Walt Anderson’s tenure. Many requested anonymity so they could speak without fear of retribution.

In April, the league announced that Anderson, who oversaw the department for the last four seasons, would vacate his role because his son Derek was hired as part of the 2024 class of officials. The NFL wanted to avoid a conflict of interest but didn’t say who would replace Anderson. A week before the start of the officials’ new league year on May 15, clubs were frustrated by the lack of information. So were the officials.

“We have a clinic the first week of June and we still don’t know who’s in charge,” Green said on May 7.
When the league finally announced the details of the restructure — the day after the officials’ season started — it was deja vu for many current and former department employees. The titles looked slightly different, but it was just another edition of what two ex-officials called a “revolving door.” This is the fifth time leadership has turned over since 2010, when Mike Pereira left and newly appointed NFL executive vice president of Football Operations Troy Vincent began presiding over the department. No one has lasted more than five years since.
“That’s when things really started to get funny up there,” a former official with experience dating back to Pereira’s tenure said. “We’re changing … every two or three years. By the third year, when (the guy’s) vision should really start to materialize, (he’s) gone.”
Morale among game officials is never going to be great — “We’re not partying on a yacht in the south of France,” former head of officiating Dean Blandino said. “This is hard.” Even so, former officials say morale sunk lower than the baseline negative under Anderson. “They are not paying enough attention upstairs to what it takes to actually run an officiating department,” Green said.
There’s optimism about former umpire Ramon George and former replay official Mark Butterworth, the new VPs of training and replay, respectively. But there’s also skepticism as officials confront yet another shakeup.
“It’s the old smoke-and-mirrors trick with the league,” one former official said. “Where does the buck stop?”
Walt Anderson was never intended to run the roughly 140-person officiating department by himself.
When he was hired in 2020, the league divided the top job into three parts, each handled by a senior vice president. Al Riveron, a former referee, had been the sole leader in the prior regime, and it wasn’t going well, so he shifted to focus on replay. Fewell, a longtime NFL defensive coach, handled administration and communication with coaches. Anderson, a former referee, managed training and development. But Riveron left the NFL just before Anderson’s second season in 2021, and Russell Yurk, Riveron’s No. 2, took a leave of absence, so Anderson stepped into the gap.

That’s when coaches like Tomlin started to get confused about who was making the final decisions on replay. And with Fewell handling most of the communication with coaches despite not having an officiating background, clubs had trouble getting coherent explanations on decisions they disagreed with. When Yurk returned for the 2022 season, Anderson remained the primary replay decision-maker in addition to training and evaluating game officials, making him a de facto department head.