Colts receiver Michael Pittman Jr. said the NFL’s push to use more technology in officiating is warranted—and also thinks the league should use full-time referees.
On Monday, at the annual “State of the League” press conference NFL commissioner Roger Goodell pushed back on criticism of referees this season—and any perceived favoritism for the Chiefs, saying officials could one day use technology to spot the ball, in place of the manual process they use now.
“I think that that’s great,” Pittman said during an interview with Front Office Sports on Radio Row ahead of Super Bowl LIX.
“They have the power to almost—I don’t want to say end somebody’s season, because at the end of the day we control our own destiny—but there’s a lot of influence in calls that are so subjective that could go either way, that we need to find ways to mitigate the percentage of error,” Pittman said.
Most recently, a spot on a crucial 4th down play in the AFC championship game saw the Bills turn the ball over to the Chiefs when quarterback Josh Allen was stopped inches from the line to gain. During the season, fans on social media cried foul over favorable calls for Kansas City.
Pittman, heading into his sixth NFL season in 2025, said he would “love to see full-time refs,” instead of the part-time basis NFL officials work on now. “The NFL is such a business,” he said. “There’s so many people that bet and they put money in—and they’re putting lots of money into sports betting—we need something that is closer or as close to perfect as we can get because everybody is going to benefit from having the right call called.”
Meanwhile, Pittman, whose father played 11 seasons in the NFL, is unsure whether the league’s push to expand to an 18-game regular season will come to fruition.
“Everything is a give and take,” he said. “So, we have to come up with something that makes it worth it for the players, because obviously football is one of the most physically taxing games.”
“We have to come up with something that is fair for both sides,” Pittman added. “And whether that happens or not and we get that game added, I don’t know.”
