How NFL games are being affected by historic FAA ground stop — including one ref working two games

The FAA’s four-hour nationwide flight halt on Friday has disrupted NFL officiating plans for Week 10, despite the league having no games on Saturday. The NFL reassigned officials to games within driving distance of their hometowns, with backup referees stepping in across four matchups.

Don Willard is set to referee both the Sunday afternoon game in Indianapolis and the evening game in Cincinnati, in two different states. The stoppage followed problems with older air-traffic-control communications technology, which Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said produced inconsistent data; FlightAware recorded 9,165 cancellations. College teams also changed travel plans, and Ole Miss’s game at Oklahoma was moved to Sunday, overlapping with the NFL schedule.