NFL, locked-out officials aim for deal to have officials working by weekend Negotiations between the NFL and the NFL Referees Assn. carried into the night on Wednesday with the sides hoping to strike a deal that would give them time to have it ratified by the union and have the officials back on the field for games this weekend. Earlier in the day, there were reports that a deal with the NFL was close, but Scott Green, a negotiator for the NFLRA, subsequently sent an email to locked-out officials informing them that no agreement was imminent. League spokesman Greg Aiello, on Twitter, invoked a quote from legendary New York Giants general manager George Young about negotiations: "There's no such thing as close." Commissioner Roger Goodell has participated in the talks, which have included four meetings last week and all-day sessions Tuesday and Wednesday on the East Coast. It's a common negotiating tactic for one side to say that an agreement is near, thereby ratcheting up the pressure on the other side to either: a) accept the deal, or b) disagree, then shoulder the blame if the talks don't lead to a resolution. Even if the sides strike a deal this week to end the officiating lockout, the agreement would need to be ratified in person by union officials. If that were done by Friday, regular officiating crews could be deployed in time for games Sunday. The locked-out officials say they are ready to work immediately. The officials are seeking a continuation of their defined-benefit pension plans, whereas the NFL wants to roll them into 401 (k) plans. There's no argument that replacement officials have made more than their share of mistakes in the first three weeks of the regular season, culminated by the Monday game at Seattle in which both the Green Bay Packers and Seahawks were beneficiaries of bad calls and non-calls. The flash point Monday was an apparent interception of a Hail Mary pass by Seattle's Russell Wilson on the game's final play. Cameras showed that Green Bay's M.D. Jennings picked off the pass, but Seahawks receiver Golden Tate was awarded the catch after pulling the ball away on the ground. Regardless of who had possession of the ball, the league said the next day, the officials missed a blatant offensive pass interference penalty on Tate. Were that called, it would have ended the game. "You can't take a bunch of inexperienced people, and give them three months of training and a rule book that they've never looked at, and expect them to function under this type of pressure," said Jerry Markbreit, a 33-year NFL official who has spent the last decade as an officiating trainer for the league. It's obviously coming back to haunt them. Meanwhile, the league took action Wednesday against two coaches for their treatment of replacement officials. New England Coach Bill Belichick was fined $50,000 for grabbing the arm of an official after a loss Sunday at Baltimore, and Kyle Shanahan, a Washington Redskins assistant and son of Coach Mike Shanahan, was fined $25,000 for "abuse of officials" after berating one in his team's loss to Cincinnati. "Any time you do what he did, you're going to get fined, and that's the nature of the game," the elder Shanahan said. If you don't abide by the rules, you're going to pay a penalty, and usually after a guy pays 25 grand, they usually learn very quickly. Belichick called his actions "inappropriate" and said he was attempting to get an explanation from an official about why there was no studying of the replay of Baltimore's winning field goal, which looked as if it could have been wide. "I've coached in this league a long time and never been penalized, never had any incidents with officials or anything like that," Belichick said. I have never meant any disrespect or in any way tried to abuse or be disrespectful to the officials and the job that they do. I'm trying to get an explanation for obviously an important call, play, in that game. That's the No. 1 thing between coaches and officials. It's always at the forefront. It's just communication of what's going on, of what's happening.