Todd Gurley’s photoshopped pic with a ref tricked some folks on the internet

Come on, Mike Francesa. Just look at the ref’s pants.

The officials probably cost the New Orleans Saints a spot in the Super Bowl when they missed an obvious pass interference penalty in the NFC Championship. The Los Angeles Ramsdidn’t even try to pretend they weren’t helped tremendously by the no-call.

So much so that Todd Gurley scooped up this Photoshop that starting making the rounds on social media, and posted it on his own Instagram:

It’s a hilarious post by Gurley and obviously 100 percent not real. It even has the creator’s EJGRAPHIX watermark right there next to referee Bill Vinovich. Not to mention the fact that he’s wearing a Saints player’s pants.

But it’s definitely a good job of using Photoshop and it’s pretty convincing if you aren’t taking a close look or — you know — using common sense.

But because it wasn’t immediately made clear by Gurley that it was fake, some people fell for it. Like New York radio host Mike Francesa:

“You should never have another jersey,” Francesa says. “Whether you’re exchanging with a player before the game — which should be an outrageous thing to begin with — no way should an official be exchanging jerseys with a player before a game. That’s such a bad thing to do, number one. Number two, they have to stay distant from the players.”

After a commercial break, he said that he was told it wasn’t a real photo:

“Thank god, at least that wasn’t true. So they didn’t exchange jerseys, I’m thankful for that.”

Former NFL executive and writer for The Athletic Michael Lombardi came close to falling for it too. But he was at least incredulous about it enough to ask others:

Stay frosty when you’re perusing the internet, everybody.