https://twitter.com/TerryLee__/status/800924055280947200
You’ll never believe this, but there was a controversial call thanks to subpar refereeing that occurred in a Monday Night Football game. Monday’s game between the Raiders and the Texans had one egregiously bad decision by the officials that really hurt Houston. Late in the game, another blown call helped Oakland walk out of Mexico City with the win.
Houston faced a fourth-and-inches with 6:18 left and the game tied at 20. The ball was on the Raiders’ 15, and while the Texans could have just kicked the field goal, the team decided to go for it instead. Houston handed the ball off to Akeem Hunt, who plowed forward and looked like he got the ball past the yellow line.
That’s close, but based on the yellow line (which is unofficial but still a generally accurate representation of the first down marker) and where Hunt’s arm is, this looks like a first down. However, the officials decided Hunt didn’t make it, Oakland got the ball, went down the field, and scored the go-ahead touchdown.
But before that happened, Texans coach Bill O’Brien decided to throw the challenge flag. Here was where the ball was marked down…
https://twitter.com/Cianaf/status/800918871641387008
…and here was where it looked like Hunt was down from a different angle.
https://twitter.com/Cianaf/status/800920346111201280
It would appear that there was some distance between where Hunt went down and where the officials marked the ball (it can be a little difficult to tell, but look at the space between Hunt’s elbow and the 15-yard line, then look at where the ball is spotted). Sure, the difference may only be 6-8 inches, but if the ball is moved up 6-8 inches, Houston gets a first down.
But the officials decided that the ruling on the field should stand. It’s amazing that, even with instant replay and the fact that there are technologies in other sports that make reviews easier, football hasn’t evolved all that much and officials still botch fairly obvious calls. We’re at a point where plays should not “stand” unless it is literally impossible to determine what happened. This was not impossible. This was a first down.
You can very easily argue that this one individual call did not cost Houston, and you would be 100 percent correct. There are so many moments over the course of a football game that you can point to and go “well, if Team A/Team B did this differently, they would have won.” This is when sports are really fun, when big moments are decided by coaches who call plays and players are given the opportunity to execute (this is where the whole “process is greater than results” thing comes into effect).
Know when sports are not really fun? When officials try their hardest to interject themselves into a game’s biggest moments, and “process is greater than results” gets a monkey wrench thrown into it because something outside of the coaches or players impact the process and/or the results. This could mean something like a mascot running onto the field mid-play and running over athletes, but 98 percent of the time, this means that officials manage to make themselves part of the game.
In fairness, officials are usually able to use the part of their brain that is able to process facts and come to a logical conclusion, and when that’s the case, they’re more of a nuisance than an impediment to the outcome of the sporting event. But as we saw on Monday, and as we’ve seen in the past this season, there are times when officials do things that makes no sense, partly because no one seems to know the rules of football.
Who knows, maybe on the next play, Brock Osweiler would have thrown into quintuple coverage, the ball would have been picked off, and the Raiders would have won anyway. Maybe on the next play, Osweiler throws a touchdown, the Texans’ defense holds, and they walk out of Mexico City the victors. Sports get dangerous once we start playing the “What If?” game, so all we can do is judge facts.
The fact is, the Texans were robbed of an additional opportunity to win, one on which the Raiders were able to capitalize. This is not right, and the NFL needs to do something to make sure this doesn’t happen going forward.
Of course, the NFL won’t do this, and we’ll keep watching anyway, because we all turn into a pair of eyeballs and a brain stem when football comes on. But hey, maybe someday, the league will realize that it has serious in-game issues with regards to officiating and the instant replay system that need to be addressed. That day wasn’t on Monday, much to the chagrin of Houston fans. But hopefully this serves as a reminder to Roger Goodell and co. about the need to make the league’s on-field product less prone to human error thanks to officials.
