Jaguars get a second for a second chance

Jaguars had a completed pass over the middle with no timeouts and seconds remaining in the half. Back judge Greg Wilson spots the ball under hurry-up officiating mechanics. The Jaguars snap the ball to spike the ball to kill the clock, but it appears that (1) the Jaguars are not set for a full second prior to the snap, (2) several Bills players did not make it onside in time, and (3) the snap or the spike may not have preceded the expiration of the clock. There was a long conference to determine all of these elements, how they are enforced, and what the actual impact is. I’m not a fan of long conferences as much as anyone, but it is important to get everything correct, especially when there are multiple elements that affect each other.

On the field, they correctly determined that that the Bills were offside. That foul kills the snap, but in order to do so, the snapping action must occur before the clock expires to fix the time of the foul. They also determined that the Jaguars were set for a full second prior to the snap, which was not correct; they were all set prior to the snap, but not long enough to be approximately a second. Had the crew ruled that the Jaguars were not set, there would not be an offside foul, because there would not have been a legal snap. That would have ended the half.

On the field, they determined the snap was in time. So the discussion will proceed with these factors determined on the field.

The time when the ball was spiked is irrelevant, because the clock stopped because the snap was killed by the foul.

Once this was determined by the crew, replay then has the ability to review the expiration of the game clock. This review took place before the penalty announcement for the sake of not making this concise in an already confusing situation.

I checked with the league and replay did confirm that the ball was moving prior to the expiration of the game clock. By affirming that, the crew had the snap-killing foul with 1 second on the clock. Replay did not get involved with any other aspect, and could not correct the Jaguars not being set prior to the snap.

Had replay found that the snap was not in time, the flag for the offside would have been picked up and the half would be over.

Long-range-reliable kicker Cam Little then attempted a 54-yard field goal that was wide left.

Editor’s note: This post was revised because the announcement was misheard initially by the author.