Clete Blakeman has a disjointed end to the 4th quarter in Berlin

Perhaps it was the travel, but referee Clete Blakeman had a disjointed end to the fourth quarter and start of OT in the Colts-Falcons game in Germany this morning. Blakeman struggled to give a concise explanation of the timing result of the intentional grounding call that resulted in a 10-second run off on the last play of the fourth quarter (to be fair, Mike Pereira didn’t do much better when he joined the broadcast).

Maybe he was still thrown off from that, because Blakeman then proceeded to give the Colts the OT coin toss choice, even though they were designated as the home team. BJ Jonah Monroe knew something was wrong and could be seen alerting Blakeman to the issue as the broadcast went to commercial. Upon returning from break, we were told they had redone the coin toss correctly, likely once Monroe and Blakeman had hashed everything out. Perhaps for neutral site games, they should simply use a coin with team designations to avoid any potential confusion such as this.

Brain farts sometimes happen, and this clearly was one. Thankfully, it was one that was easily fixed.