After 15 years as an NFL official, it looks like referee Gene Steratore has decided to hang up his whistle for good.The 's vice president of
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officiating, Al Riveron, announced on Friday . Of course, Riveron is probably used to making retirement announcements at this point, because that's basically all he's been doing this offseason. Steratore becomes the fourth referee to retire this offseason, which is notable, because the NFL only had a total of the 2017 regular season. That means the
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league is going to be forced to replace nearly 25 percent of its refs heading into the upcoming season.Besides Steratore, the NFL has also lost lost Ed Hochuli, Jeff Triplette and Terry McAulay, who . A big reason so many refs are jumping ship this year is because there's now ample opportunity for them to make money in TV. Both Triplette and McAulay have already lined up TV jobs, with Triplette headed to ESPN's and McAulay headed to NBC for , . More NFL As for Steratore,
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although it's not clear if he has a TV job in his future, it wouldn't be surprising to see him make that move, and that's because he's regularly been one of the NFL's best officials. As a matter of fact, Steratore graded so highly in 2017 that he was for LII, which will now go down as his final game as an NFL ref. Over his 15-year career, Steratore worked a total of 12 playoff games, including the Super Bowl. Besides Super Bowl LII, there's a good chance that you remember at least one other playoff
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game where Steratore was the ref: Cowboys-Packers. Yup, Steratore was the referee for the , where Dez didn't actually catch it -- or maybe he did, I'm still not sure.Steratore was also the ref for one of the oddest moments of the NFL 2017 season. During a game against the Cowboys and Raiders, Steratore gave Dallas a first down late in the game, but only with the measurement. That was SO CLOSE SB Nation NFL (@SBNationNFL) Steratore originally entered the NFL as
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a field judge in 2003, before being promoted to referee in 2006.
