Dueling signals cause the Panthers to lose a down and yards

Early in the third quarter it was a pass that was ruled forward, was definitely backward, and actually could have been wiped from existence. It was a mess of the highest order in a game that determined a division title that was similarly messy with a losing record and a potential three-way tiebreaker spoiler.

Panthers quarterback Bryce Young’s pass was backward to running back Rico Dowdle, but line judge Walter Flowers quickly ruled it a forward pass and incomplete. To unravel what happened next, let’s step in with a sequence that didn’t happen here.

With an on-field ruling of an incomplete pass, replay assist would be able to jump in and correct the call to a backward pass. This would give the Panthers the ball 2nd & 17 from the 41 instead of 2nd & 10 for an incomplete pass.

Replay assist did not jump in, because after a conference on the field, down judge Sarah Thomas came in to definitively rule a backward pass. Because this is clearly backward, Thomas — who has a better angle cross-field — must make a call based on what she saw and not punt it up to the replay booth. To do otherwise would be a downgrade.

Referee Brad Allen announced that the call on the field was a backward pass, and after initially stating the ball went out of bounds, corrected the call to a recovery with Dowdle “giving himself up.” Of course Dowdle did not attempt to advance because Flowers blew the play dead.

Flowers was guilty of a really quick whistle, instead of giving some time to process and make sure that he’s not giving a dueling signal against Thomas. Some are looking at the position of Flowers to make that call, but he’s correctly positioned on the line of scrimmage, because the preference is to rule on the play advancing toward the line of scrimmage and the surrounding blocking.

In replay, the reversal is not considered an inadvertent whistle — or what the rulebook now terms an erroneous whistle — because a ruling on the field has changed. But in this case, the whistle does not align with the determined ruling of a backward pass, and thus it is an erroneous whistle. A few weeks ago, there was a much-discussed Seahawks backward pass recovery that was allowed because the ruling on the field was incomplete, and the whistle matched that ruling. Replay was allowed to award the recovery after the whistle by the rules of replay; because the whistle was valid, it is not considered erroneous if replay changes the call on the field.

Back to Charlotte, since there was an erroneous whistle that killed a live play, the Panthers had an option of taking the result of the play up to the whistle, or replaying the down. Allen acknowledged that in a postgame interview with a pool reporter:

The line judge made an initial ruling of incomplete, then the down judge saw that the pass was clearly backward … What was reported to me was the ruling on the field was a backward pass, and once it was possessed, the runner gave himself up which by rule caused the play to become dead. Because of the erroneous whistle, the Panthers could have had a choice to replay the down.

The operative words here are could have, because without those words, the sentence has a completely different meaning. The Panthers would obviously take a redo rather than a clusterfoxtrotted muffed backward pass whistled dead. But the time between the announcement of the ruling on the field, and resetting the play clock to 25, there was no time for Panthers coach Dave Canales to receive options and decide. While the coach can jump in and demand that he get a replay of the down, it is incumbent upon Allen and his crew to communicate to a coach any time there are options.

This compounded failure not only deprived the Panthers of a down (leading to a field goal attempt two plays later) but also yardage (it was short).

Week 18 is not graded prior to assigning playoff positions, because of the quick turnaround. However, officiating vice president Ramon George does have an extra 24 hours to consider what happened in this game.