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Dean Blandino on Tuesday told a funny story about just how much goes on behind the scenes of an NFL game — and how something as a simple microwave could derail an entire operation.
Blandino, appearing on an episode of the Mike Delivers podcast, recalled how, during the 2016 Thanksgiving Day game between the Lions and Vikings, a microwave knocked out the NFL's replay review system.
Per Blandino, who was working with the NFL at the time as its vice president of officiating, someone pulled a microwave out of a pantry to reheat some Thanksgiving Day food that the NFL had catered from a local Whole Foods:
"We took the microwave and plugged it in, but they plugged it into the same outlet, the same circuit that the replay system was plugged into," Blandino said. "So when they turned the (microwave) on the whole thing went down. So we were down for maybe like two minutes while they fixed it while the game was going on."
Luckily, the replay system was restored without incident, and Detroit went on to beat Minnesoa 16-13.
"Thankfully we didn’t have any replay reviews," Blandino said. "but we kind of shut down the system because we wanted to heat up the stuffing for Thanksgiving in the microwave."