NEW YORK--In response to an outcry over poor officiating this past weekend, NFL officials are vowing to pay more attention to the games this week. They will also brush up on the rule book and try to remember what pass interference and holding penalties look like.

“We will make a concerted effort to pay more attention to the games this week,” said head of officials Mike Pereira. “Obviously, this past weekend we fell a little short in that area. What we need to do now is rededicate ourselves to watching all the plays and making sure no penalties are happening. And we can’t just blow our whistles because we’re bored. As funny as it is to us, it’s really upsetting to the players.”

Pereira said that a memo has been sent out to all officials instructing them to keep their heads in the game instead of up their asses.

“All the referees are aware of what we’re asking of them,” said Pereira. “There should be no confusion next week. As I’ve said before, NFL officials are a proud group and we take our jobs very seriously. If you can’t at least follow the games on a remedial level, you shouldn’t be out there. That’s our credo.”

The Packers-Redskins game had the most disputed calls on Sunday, including a phantom holding call that robbed Green Bay of a touchdown. The crew, led by Terry McAuley, robbed the Packers of another touchdown by calling Bubba Franks out of bounds when he was clearly pushed out. After the game, McAuley admitted that his crew was “a little hazy” on the push-out rule.

“So if a player catches a ball in the air and then is pushed out of bounds, it’s…out of bounds, right?” McAuley asked. “Or do you call it a push-out and give him the completion? I’m not really sure. To our credit, we conferred on the play and made our best guess. As far as the holding call, it was my understanding that a Packer was holding a Redskin. You could tell by how the Redskin was screaming ‘holding!’ That was a dead giveaway right there.”

Perhaps the most egregious call of the day came when McAuley flagged a Redskins cornerback for pass interference on a running play. Though it infuriated the Redskins, Pereira supported the call after viewing the play on Monday morning.

“That was actually the correct call,” Pereira said during an appearance on the NFL Network. “The rule states that if a cornerback interferes with the receiver while the ball is in the air, it’s pass interference. Now the ball wasn’t actually in the air, but if you look here, you can see the cornerback bumping the Packers wide receiver, meaning it’s pass interference. It doesn’t matter if it was a running play. Hey, we don’t make the rules. We just misinterpret them.”

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell held a meeting on Tuesday with Pereira in which he stressed the importance of not ruining multiple games every week. He also warned of “severe consequences” if the quality of the officiating doesn’t improve in the near future.

“Mike and I had a good conversation. I think he knows that I’m concerned,” Goodell said today. “I have total faith in him to tackle this issue head on and ensure that our teams and fans get the highly accurate officiating they deserve. We’re not even asking for 100 percent accuracy. We’ll settle for 80 percent. Hell, we’ll settle for 70 percent if you can somehow get Brett Favre to the Super Bowl.”

Copyright 2007, The Brushback - Do not reprint without permission. This article is satire and is not intended as actual news.