Thread: Officials in the Lions/Vikes game

Firs tof all let me begin by saying this was one of the poorest refereed games I've seen in a long time. I mean calls were totally missed on both side of the ball.
But to my real question...
I don't pride myself as being an expert but I still don't understand the call made when Kitna dropped the ball. The referees said that his arm was not moving forward. Doesn't that make it a fumble rather than an incomplete pass? Then they don't even count the play as a down! What's up with that?
Cna someone please enlighten me?

....and why did it take so long to review that call?
I tought it was only suppose to take 90 seconds/

"COJOMAY" wrote:

Firs tof all let me begin by saying this was one of the poorest refereed games I've seen in a long time. I mean calls were totally missed on both side of the ball.
But to my real question...
I don't pride myself as being an expert but I still don't understand the call made when Kitna dropped the ball. The referees said that his arm was not moving forward. Doesn't that make it a fumble rather than an incomplete pass? Then they don't even count the play as a down! What's up with that?
Cna someone please enlighten me?

They said his arm wasn't moving forward, which instead of an incomplete pass, it made it a sack. I do not believe they awarded anyone a forced fumble, because according to them the rule states that since the play was blown dead, you "can't determine who would have came up with the ball" if it was overturned into a fumble, even tho the vidoe evidence was CLEAR that we did.


So we got a sack for it instead of an incompletion... still a very strange and dumb reversal, but i'll take it over nothing.

I thought the same thing. If nothing else, they should have explained it better. It won't get any airtime though b/c we won by such a large margin.

I believe it was called a fumble however the Ref had blown the whistles and therefore the ball stayed with the offense.
Instead of being an incomplete pass it was a sack and loss of yards.
I'm not sure it was really worth a challenge (risk a timeout for a few yards of field possession) but Fans and some players may have been furious if he hadn't thinking we could've gotten the ball regardless of the whistle.
Fact was, it was an inadvertent whistle and it cost us the ball.

I didn't think the calls were that bad.
They let the players play.
I wasn't real impressed with the holding call on Wade, that's how most Wideouts block, but oh well...

"BleedinPandG" wrote:

I believe it was called a fumble however the Ref had blown the whistles and therefore the ball stayed with the offense.
Instead of being an incomplete pass it was a sack and loss of yards.
I'm not sure it was really worth a challenge (risk a timeout for a few yards of field possession) but Fans and some players may have been furious if he hadn't thinking we could've gotten the ball regardless of the whistle.
Fact was, it was an inadvertent whistle and it cost us the ball.

I didn't think the calls were that bad.
They let the players play.
I wasn't real impressed with the holding call on Wade, that's how most Wideouts block, but oh well...

I thought that was legit.

Legit, probably... but I'd argue that same thing happens on most runs around the side when WRs are blocking...

"BleedinPandG" wrote:

Legit, probably... but I'd argue that same thing happens on most runs around the side when WRs are blocking...

Yes but like its been said "If you wanted too, you could call holding on every single play of every game"

The announcers on the TV didn't know what was going on and so neither did I. They never explained about that you can't reverse the call. But what bothers me even more is that then the Lions had one more play and faced a fourth down. But the guy holding the side marker said third down. I don't think the announcers knew what was going on because they said that officially there had been three downs and it was fourth down. Then they said the pass/fumble didn't count as a play. But I counted three plays, too. I tried to look up the play by play on ESPN but it wasn't totally up yet.
I still don't understand that one.

The refereeing wasn't all that bad, IMO. The WVA/Pitt game was a lot worse.

If the whistle blows, the play is dead right there, no matter what.

NFL officiating has improved a lot in the last few years. I'd still like to see a booth review for pass interference, and whether a field goal try was successful, though.