[Monkeydad]

It was great seeing a ref I recognize. It was also great to have some professionalism and more importantly, eyesight in the stripes.

Seemed like night and day with the crew last night. Even the ref's calls just sounded better...it sounded like he was sure about the call and had a sort of forcefulness to his announcement. Am I crazy about this?

The replacements had discussions, looked around, delayed and then made a tentative-sounding call. The real ref last night picked up the flag and made a concise, strong call that sounded like he knew what he was doing...because he did.

The little things we didn't notice or appreciate before.

This is like when I get to drive the nicer family car on the weekend after driving my higher-mileage, older, smaller daily driver to work all week. Driving that car all week makes our Taurus feel like a luxury car. You don't realize how crappy your car is until you drive a nice one.