Blog Archive

Just when you thought the maddness had ended from last weekend’s amazing playoff games, word comes from the NFL that the last minute call in the Giants-Forty Niners game was botched:

NFL: Niners should have been flagged for interference
New York’s Rich Seubert, an eligible receiver on the play, gets dragged down by San Francisco’s Chike Okeafor before the pass gets to him. A pass-interference penalty should have been called against the San Francisco 49ers at the end of their wild 39-38 playoff victory, giving New York another chance to kick a game-winning field goal, said Mike Pereira, NFL director of officiating. The refs ruled correctly that New York had an ineligible receiver downfield. But they did not throw a flag when Rich Seubert was yanked to the ground as he tried to catch a pass near the end zone after the Giants bungled the field-goal attempt . . . Seubert lined up as an eligible receiver. He told the officiating crew before the game that he would be in that position on field goals.

Wow. So not only did the officials blow it the announcers did to because no one (to my knowledge) realized that the receiver was elligble! What a mess. An ugly ending to a wild game. Still you have to feel that the Giants brought it on themselves with all of the stupid penalties and the bad snaps etc. It seems tragic but not surprising that the ref might miss something in all of that chaos. Life is not fair, especially in football.

Along these same lines, Rich Lowry was wondering in NRO’s The Corner how the last minute mistakes and missed oppertunities that resulted in the Giants and Browns losing could have been avoided. Lowry and his subsequent emailer are right, spiking the ball was not an option (is anyone really suprized that Chris Collinsworth was wrong?) but the holder did have a number of options other than heaving a desperation pass. If you want the details click on the video links on the right side of this ESPN page. They outline pretty clearly the options that G-men holder Matt Allen had before him:
- Fall on the ball and call timeout.
- Throw an incomplete pass near an eligble reciever (As Rich suggested).
- Get outside the pocket and throw it out of bonds

Provided he had time, he obviously could have just run out of bonds to stop the clock. With seven seconds on the clock perhaps he didn’t have enough time to get out of bonds. But if he had been thinking he clearly could have done any of the above and given his team a chance to win. Given the fact that they were kicking on third down it seems reasonable that the holder be aware of his options and that the coach remind his player of such options. These guys are supposed to be professionals after all.

As to Rich’s question about the Brown’s player:

Why couldn’t the Cleveland Browns receiver who caught that pass with about two seconds on the clock tossed the ball out of bounds, instead of trying to run out of bounds, thus stopping the clock for a field-goal attempt?

I don’t belive you can intentionally fumble the ball in the NFL. He had very little time so he couldn’t have just “accidently” dropped the ball out of bounds any quicker than he could have run out of bounds. Any attempt to throw the ball out of bounds would have been spotted as the ploy that it was and likely would have resulted in a penalty and a runoff of time thus ending the game. At least that is my take.