Football has become faster, fiercer, more athletic and overall, just a harder game to officiate. Add to that the fact that NFL officials are not full time, and have other professional jobs during the week. How much time are they spending watching the games from the week before? How much time are they studying their craft? From the looks of the problems that we've seen this year, not nearly enough.

Not only are the officials not full time, but they also lack much of the athleticism the players possess. If the players are so much more athletic than the officials are, move faster and hit harder, how can the officials be expected to appropriately officiate without having so many of them on the field that it would be a detriment to the game?

In Sunday night's game, it wasn't even the fact that the officials were not athletic enough -- it was that they didn't know the rule and couldn't articulate it to the fans. The referee, Scott Green, first said that there was a forward pass, and that the ball should have been dead at that point and so the touchdown didn't count.

However, after looking at the replay, it was clear that neither lateral went forward, and shouldn't Green have seen that? The fact that he wasn't able to get it right, even after seeing it on replay, is a problem; that he couldn't articulate the reason the call was made is another problem. That call had major repercussions in the betting world, as well as in fantasy football.

The other problem with officiating as I see it are the rules that the NFL has put in place to protect the quarterbacks and other players. In Monday's Browns/Bills game, a player still in bounds (although heading out of bounds) was hit hard and hit the other team's bench, and a flag was thrown for unnecessary roughness.

To me, that's a problem with the NFL rules that cause the officials to have to make that call. If someone is in the field of play, how can someone not hit them as hard as possible to get them down?

What is the answer? To me, the NFL needs to hire full-time referees, provide them with the training they need and hold them accountable when they make mistakes. Giving Hochuli a "lower grade" is not sufficient in terms of accountability. Idling him for four weeks would have been better.

Am I right? Wrong? What is your idea to make referees do a better job and not make all of these mistakes that we continue to see as the game becomes faster?

Bruce Hammond is a frequent contributor to The Pigskin Podcast. E-mail him comments and feedback.