4th Quarter | :27 remaining | Patriots 23-20 | Ravens ball | 2nd & 1 @ NE 14 | video

The Ravens, driving for a potential conference-winning touchdown against the Patriots, found themselves a dropped pass short in their effort. They had to settle for a field goal attempt to tie the game, and were denied a shot at destiny on the missed field goal.

On the second-down pass in the end zone, Ravens receiver Lee Evans was not able to secure the catch in the right corner of the end zone. Patriots defensive back Sterling Moore saved the Patriots fortunes by jarring the ball loose, causing the ball to fall incomplete. After the network replayed the incompletion, there was a collective eek from the audience. It is close enough to be reviewed, isn’t it? The replay official determined that it did not warrant another look from referee Alberto Riveron and the call stood.

But should the replay official have challenged the call because this is a pivotal moment in a championship game? Depends not only on who you ask, but when.

NFL spokesman Mike Signora backed up the call made by the replay official:

The ruling on the field of an incomplete pass was confirmed by the Instant Replay assistant, correctly, and as a result, there was no need to stop the game

(As a side note, we refer to the person in the replay booth as the “replay official,” to be consistent with the NFL rule book. All references in the rule book to “replay assistant” were changed in the last offseason, with no reason published at the time. We believe it is to reflect the increased decisions he is required to make after scoring plays and after the two-minute warning.)

Mike Pereira, the Fox Sports rules-interpretation jukebox, gave his assessment on Sunday, via text message to Pro Football Talk, that matched the league response:

Clearly not a catch. Ball coming out before second foot clearly down. . . .  No need to review it because it was clearly incomplete.

(Another side note: this was not posted on Twitter, as Pereira usually does, because of a Twitter brownout yesterday. Or something like that.)

So the 2012 Mike Pereira would disagree with the 2009 Pereira, who was then the vice-president of officiating for the NFL:

Next time it happens, at this point of the game, this big of a play, let’s go ahead and [call for a replay review].

His 2009 doppelgänger was referring to a play near the end of Super Bowl XLIII, when Cardinals quarterback  Kurt Warner fumbled in the late stages of the game, when it looked like it was possible that it was an incomplete pass. No replay review was called, but Pereira acknowledged that it should be standard protocol to double check these things at the end of a game, because the calls are just too crucial.

It appeared that this advice was followed early in the 2009 season (we called it a “critical juncture review clause“). Apparently, it was forgotten. If it was ever committed to internal policy, it has since been retracted.

And, while it doesn’t silence the conspiracy theorists, the replay official did his job and the ruling on the field –  a correct one — stood.

• Patriots defensive lineman Richard Seymour, $7,500 for unnecessary roughness and $7,500 for facemask foul.
• Patriots safety Patrick Chung, $7,500 for unnecessary roughness.
• Ravens defensive tackle Haloti Ngata, $15,000 for leading with helmet on a tackle. The hit resulted in a fumble returned for a touchdown, which should have been nullified by penalty.
• Steelers center Maurkice Pouncey, $7,500 for unnecessary roughness.
• 49ers tackle Anthony Davis, $25,000, two leg whip penalties.
• Bears safety Brandon Meriweather, $20,000 for a helmet-to-helmet hit (as a repeat offender).
• Eagles defensive end Jason Babin, $15,000 for a hit to the quarterback’s neck.
• Redskins special teamer Niles Paul, $20,000 for hit on a defenseless receiver.

This week: 9 fines, $125,000

Not much information here, but when a referee gives a pool report to the media, we report it here. The Bills scored a late-fourth-quarter touchdown that was reversed on replay. As a result of the reversal, the status of the clock was also reversed from stopped (on the touchdown call)  to running (down inside the 1-yard line). Following the announcement of the reversal, the clock is to return to its running state.

Apparently there was confusion on the part of Patriots coach Bill Belichick, and referee Carl Cheffers explained the scenario to a pool reporter after the game.

Q: What was the explanation on the Patriots’ second charged timeout at the end of the game … after the replay [review]?

Cheffers: Coach Belichick wanted an explanation as to what was going to take place after the replay. Obviously, we had a reversal. We put the ball at the half-yard line. The clock was going to start. He wanted a confirmation of what was going to happen at that point. I went over there and explained to him that the ball was at the half. He asked me when the clock was going to start. I said as soon as I was done with the explanation with him that I was going to go out on the field and start the clock. He stayed down there. I didn’t understand exactly why he stayed down there. I went back over there and he said he wanted a timeout. So I gave him his second charged timeout.

Week 2: Eagles at Falcons

After delivering a headhunting hit to Eagles receiver Jeremy Maclin, Falcons cornerback Dunta Robinson was looking to send a message.

The NFL also sent a message that it is afraid to enforce harsh sanctions for hits that sometimes cause careers to end, diminish the quality of former players’ lives, and even shorten their life expectancy. The league talks tough — threatening suspension for flagrant helmet-to-helmet hits — then shrinks back when action is required and demanded. Robinson, whose salary and bonuses average $9.5 million a year, was fined $40,000, or less than a half of one percent. In terms of a 60-minute game, Robinson makes $40,000 in 4 minutes and 15 seconds — whether he’s on the field or not.

The NFL’s press release admits they low-balled the number:

Robinson is a repeat offender of player safety rules. He was fined $25,000 for a 2010 violation of player safety rules … The minimum amount in the 2011 Fine Schedule for a second violation of the rules on hits against defenseless players is $40,000.

Robinson’s hit last year on Eagles receiver DeSean Jackson (which Jackson does not remember due to the violence of the hit to his head) resulted in a heavy fine ($50,000, which was lowered to $25,000 on appeal) and was one of three such hits that spurred a midseason enforcement memo to all players. That same day, all of the teams played a DVD from the league (video) explaining the helmet-to-helmet hits would be met with equally harsh discipline from the league office.

The memo’s blustery language warned of flagrant helmet-to-helmet hits being a first-time-suspendable offense, but the new enforcement has yet to result in a benching. Robinson, who said Sunday, “I feel strongly that there will not be any further repercussion,” has now become emboldened to go out against the Buccaneers next Sunday and lay down the lumber on another defenseless receiver.

Rough play is part of the game, but is it a part of the game to cause a player to be unable to recall being hit? Is it an acceptable part of the game today, only to be followed by a story 20 years later of a former player who commits suicide because of the accumulated “acceptable” damage to his brain? When you read that story in 2031, you probably would think to yourself, “oh, that’s terrible,” and then continue on with your day.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Or, this way:

On Aug. 12, 1978, Patriots receiver Darryl Stingley, for the last time in his life, set his feet under his own power on the 10-yard line at the Oakland Coliseum. Raiders defensive back Jack Tatum administered a signature hit which sent Stingley limp to the turf, unable to move. With a compressed spinal cord and two broken vertebrae, Stingley was paralyzed from the neck down. He died in 2007 due to complications by quadriplegia.

And no one talks about a single touchdown Stingley caught or his statistics. It is the injury that defines his career. When Tatum died, headlines for his obituary made mention of the play. It was the hit that defined a career.

Is this the legacy that Robinson desires? Isn’t this an injury that the NFL would like to prevent?

The message sent by the NFL’s memo was loud and clear. The message sent by not fining Robinson was deafening.

It is the dreaded Tuck Rule, added to the rulebook in 1999, and most notably implemented in a 2002 playoff game that turned impending elimination into second life for the Patriots on the road to their Super Bowl victory.

Mike Pereira previously held the title until he retired last year to become the rules expert on the Fox Sports staff. Pereira held the view that the Tuck Rule should remain, but changed his tune this past week, now that he no longer works for the league.

Even with Pereira’s change of heart, Johnson ensures that the Tuck Rule has a continuity of support from the officiating management. On the NFL Network “Official Review” segment (video), Johnson says the Competition Committee will have the ultimate decision on the fate of the Tuck Rule, but defended its use:

It would be a cheap fumble if the guy who’s throwing the ball attempts to bring it back or is trying to tuck it. I like the rule the way it is.

It will be interesting if the Competition Committee considers the opinion of the former over the current head of officiating when they review changes to the rulebook in the offseason.

What many perceived as a fumble recovery by the Raiders, sealing the fate of the Patriots, was overturned by a replay review. The fumble by Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was now a harmless incomplete pass; the Patriots had new life to tie the score and then win in overtime.

The Tuck Rule gave Brady an advantage, because as he reconsidered throwing a pass, he had not yet tucked the ball back to his body, and thus, was by the letter of the rule, still engaging in a forward pass.

At the time, director of officiating Mike Pereira — whose title was later elevated to vice-president of officiating — defended the rule because it gave objective criteria to referees to determine when a quarterback, who withdraws from a pass attempt during a throwing motion, becomes a runner again. Tucking the ball back towards the body is an objective criteria, but the rulebook (Rule 3, Section 21, Article 2) considers the end of the tucking motion, and not the start of, as the conclusion of the throwing motion:

Note 2: When [an offensive] player is holding the ball to pass it forward, any intentional forward movement of his hand starts a forward pass, even if the player loses possession of the ball as he is attempting to tuck it back toward his body.

Fast forward to this past weekend, when the Tuck Rule again reversed a fumble recovery for the defense. The Ravens dominated the game, so the missed opportunity was inconsequential to the result.

Pereira now works as a rules analyst for Fox Sports, and he has reconsidered his position on the Tuck Rule:

This was clearly a correct reversal, but is it time to look at this rule because Cassel was not attempting to pass the ball when it came loose.

I think it’s time to change this rule. A pass should only be ruled incomplete if the ball comes loose in the actual act of passing the ball. If it comes loose in the tucking motion, then it should be a fumble.

I would support a rule change, although it took me a long time to get to this point. I’m sure it’s no consolation to the many Raiders fans around the country.

Pereira is not just any opinion, however. Even though he no longer holds a position with the league, the NFL’s Competition Committee will likely take note of Pereira’s shift and suggest a change to the rule. Pereira’s influence has seemed to increase as a now-independent auditor of the league’s officiating.

And, maybe people will stop bothering referee Walt Coleman about the correct call he made on that day.

Pereira also summarized other calls made during the wild card games, which you can compare to our analysis (part 1 | part 2).

Referee Ed Hochuli won’t have the benefit of his informative public-address announcements to defend a flag in the second quarter of the Sunday night game.

Mike Reiss of ESPNBoston.com reports a helmet-to-helmet hit by Patriots cornerback Devin McCourty on Packers tight end Andrew Quarless was penalized 20 to 30 seconds after the play because Hochuli received visual confirmation from a scoreboard replay.

The scoreboard video can never be used by officials to make any ruling. Ever.

I have to see the video of the call myself, but it may not be relevant if Hochuli saw a penalizable action on the scoreboard. As the head referee, Hochuli doesn’t call downfield penalties, because his coverage area is the quarterback. However, Hochuli would make the ultimate call in a case where the covering officials are “tied” in their decision.

That said, the appearance of the use of the scoreboard video is troubling. This is likely to stoke the rumor mill, so I expect the league to make a statement on this by midweek, even if it is a one-sentence (or one-word) answer.

Also likely is that Patriots coach Bill Belichick will fry the video board director who rolled a replay that oddly may have disadvantaged the home team.

Belichick also addressed the highly litigious Hochuli crew: “Look these guys call the most penalties of any crew in the league. … We knew it was going to be a [tightly officiated] game, and it was. I’ve got to do a better job preparing the team.”

After administering a pass interference penalty at the 1-yard line, the Packers were trying to snap the ball quickly, which referee Ed Hochuli announced was impermissible:

We were coming out of a penalty and the team has the opportunity to line up. [Whistles heard after a pause.]

There was no timeout called. There was no timeout called. I came in and stopped the play, because coming out of an administrative stoppage, both teams need to come out and be set.

Thanks to the Sunday Night Football Extra online feed, I was not only able to rewind to see exactly what was being called, but could do so from multiple angles (something oddly missing from each team’s replay review capabilities). Within seconds of the penalty being announced and spotted, the Patriots are seen substituting at least four players when the Packers are huddled. (At least four are seen offsides in the picture, three entering and one leaving the field; there are others out of frame.) The Packers break the huddle at that point, trying to catch the Patriots shorthanded and offside.

A reasonable amount of time was not given, especially since the ball was as far away from the team bench as possible.

Unrelated post-script. A quick side note of appreciation from the Sunday Night Football crew for their work on a first down measurement. NBC brought one of their StediCams on the field to zoom in on the one-link-short measurement. In the photo below, you can see the live camera angle in the inset picture, with the overhead cable camera in the larger picture, revealing the StediCam operator. Now why he’s wearing shorts in sub-freezing Foxborough, Mass., is another story, but his shot was excellent.

(Lawyers, please, I try to keep game footage pictures to a minimum, only if the point can’t be illustrated otherwise. But, do appreciate the plug.)

Image credits: NFL/NBC Sports via Sunday Night Football Extra

The topics under discussion (not in the same order):

• We discussed earlier in the week how the crew of Jeff Triplette had a major breakdown in administering replay challenges. First, Triplette was willing to review a challenge that the Cowboys recovered a fumble, when the rulebook clearly states this is a nonreviewable play. Pereira said, “I was shocked that we started to even go toward the monitor to review it.”
• Later in the same game, the Packers attempted to call for a challenge when it had exhausted all of its challenges. Triplette should have known immediately, but (according to Pereira) it was replay assistant Bob Boyleston who informed Triplette of the discrepancy. We noted that the officials then should have penalized the Packers bench for an excess challenge. Pereira backed up our assessment by saying, “We should have thrown the flag right then for unsportsmanlike conduct. It’s a 15-yard penalty … He should have been penalized right at that point. We were wrong in not doing that.”
• In the Ravens–Browns Monday Night Football game, the Browns were granted a fourth timeout erroneously in the second half. Pereira did not hide the fact that it was a major error:

It happened because we, as a crew, failed to record on our cards the [timeout] at the 3:24 mark of the third quarter. … Everybody on the field basically forgot to record the timeout. And the scoreboard did, too. So, we didn’t have it on our cards [and] it showed on the scoreboard that we had one left. Therefore, we granted the first play after the two-minute warning a fourth timeout. All our fault.”

To sum up all of the operational errors, Periera added this:

These type of administrative things should never happen and we accept responsibility for that.

• Also under “Official Review” was the oft-talked-about 4th-and-2 play where the Patriots attempted to get the first down to run out the clock, rather than punt to the Colts (video). Because the ball was juggled (and clearly indicated by headlinesman Tom Stabile), forward progress cannot be granted until the player gets control. It was a good call by Stabile in real-time, and a tough call to make on such a pivotal play. With the benefit of replay, it would appear that the Patriots were further back even. When Kevin Faulk maintains control, he is in the air and going to the ground. Even though he has caught the ball, he has not by rule caught the ball until he plants two solid feet, or has gone completely to the ground. (For spotting purposes, forward progress would be given at the point of any body part other than a hand or foot hitting the ground, provided the receiver subsequently completes the process of a catch.) Pereira should have stopped talking at that point, because he said that if the original call was first down, and if the Colts challenged the call, that the original call would have stood. This is a wishy-washy answer, as Faulk is clearly bobbling the ball and not touching the ground until clearly behind the first-down marker.
• In the Buccaneers–Dolphins game, an incomplete pass was correctly overturned as an interception (video). OK, I know there is dispute at to whether it was correctly overturned. Much like in Week 2, an incomplete pass which is overruled as an interception gives the intercepting team the ball where it was caught, nullifying any return.

All that said, I was very distracted with Pereira’s new video control device, which seems to be a modded wireless Xbox 360 controller. Seemed to me that the rewind/slow/pause switch that Pereira had up to this point, albeit wired, simply and unobtrusely did its job. Or, perhaps Pereira was playing Madden NFL ’10: Referee Edition off camera.

We did not specifically address the star-treatment aspect here, as there is an entire conspiracy movement well documented on the Internet that the officials are out to “get” certain teams or protect certain players.

The conspiracy movement gained some steam over the past week with two hairline judgment calls in the Week 4 Ravens–Patriots game. The league won’t weigh in on whether the calls were bad, because it does not want to affect future judgment calls. In fact, the league’s Game-Related Discipline manual distributed to the players specifically addresses such judgment calls:

The Competition Committee emphasizes that whenever a game official is confronted with a potential unnecessary-roughness situation and is in doubt about calling a foul, he should lean toward safety and not hesitate to throw the flag.

Some have seized upon the effort of Tom Brady to draw a 15-yard penalty against the defense, and this week’s “Official Review” segment on NFL Total Access has the video of the play in question. After mostly evading a hit from Terrell Suggs, Brady turns to referee Ron Winter and gestures for a penalty flag. Winter, who is already reaching for the flag, nods to Brady and throws the flag. To those believing there is a conspiracy, this looked like Winter acquiesced to Brady’s plea, rather than—having already decided to penalize—merely acknowledged Brady’s request. (Much like if a quarterback unsuccessfully lobbies for the call, the referee would likely shake his head “no.”)

Not surprisingly, the commissioner yesterday dismissed claims of impropriety:

I don’t think they influence the officials. I take a different position. I think it’s really to some extent a coaching matter. The players should be playing. They should be focused on doing their job. And the officials need to do their job. If it interfered with the officials doing their job, then I would have more of a concern. I don’t think it influences the officials. I don’t think it’s been a problem that has been raised to me that it’s a conflict or in any way difficult for our officials to manage on the field.