I generally like to watch Eagles games from the comfort of my own home. I want to be able to hear, and then destroy, subpar broadcast teams that use tired clichés and serve up platitudes like, “I gotta tell ya, Mark, Darren Sproles might be little in stature, but this guy has a BIG HEART.” You know how this goes. Then the other guy in the booth will finish the tag team verbal fellatio before they finally get around to the next play. You just can’t hear it as well at the bar. I also stay out of bars for the games because I don’t need to hear some jackass wearing a David Akers jersey scream, “Run the ball!” after an incomplete pass. Four minutes later he’s screaming “Throw it!” when a run play goes nowhere. Really, more than anything, I like to be able to pay close attention to who’s playing well and who’s not, so I know exactly who to blame when shit hits the fan. I tell you all of this because Thursday night was my 32nd birthday, and I made the extremely rare decision of having my friends meet up at a local bar where the game audio was impossible to hear. In the end, we picked the right game. It was obviously a monster win, with a dramatic finish and a game that gave the assembled crowd a lot to cheer about. Still, there was one major annoyance that virtually every single person, including some who undoubtedly aren’t too well versed in football, noticed throughout the night. Everybody had the same exact reaction to it:

“What the fuck is the deal with these refs?”

You know the story by now. The Eagles were hit with 10 penalties for 126 yards, while the Panthers had one penalty for one yard. Calls of anti-Eagles bias were immediate, and, upon further review, possibly true. It turns out that over the past four Eagles games Morelli has officiated, the Eagles have drawn 40 penalties for 396 yards, while their opponents were flagged only eight times for 74 yards. That’s a pretty jarring discrepancy, and, because Eagles fans are insane, they’ve created a Change.org petition asking Roger Goodell to ensure Morelli never gets a chance to fuck them again:

NFL Referee Pete Morelli has a clear and statistically obvious bias against the Philadelphia Eagles…This is unacceptable and puts the Philadelphia Eagles at a disadvantage. Preventing Morelli from refereeing Eagles games will result in a more trustworthy and honest NFL. This will benefit the entire league and keep all claims of conspiracy to a normal level.

You know who told me about (and also signed) this petition? MY MOM. Her football observations are typically limited to insightful takes such as, “I like when the green team makes touchdowns.”

So I had a birthday dinner over at my parents last night. She turns to me right before we eat and says matter-of-factly, “How about that game on Thursday night? I wanted to KILL that referee so bad. I signed a petition I saw on Facebook. Screw that guy,” right before we joined hands and said grace. It was a very wholesome family moment. So if you want to let off some steam directed at Pete Morelli by way of an online petition that will almost certainly go unread by the league office… well, now you can.

I love Eagles fans. They’re the best.