On Sunday, Seattle managed to squeak by the Cowboys 13-12 to get back to .500 on the year and send Dallas to its fifth-consecutive loss. With a low-scoring game that is that close, every little play matters, and, unfortunately for the Cowboys, it appears as though they got screwed out of a critical play by the officials late in the first half.
The Seahawks called for a timeout as Dallas kicker Dan Bailey was lining up for a field goal to avoid a penalty for 12 men on the field. The problem is, they had just called a timeout the play before, and you aren’t allowed to call back-to-back timeouts in the same dead ball period. Attempting to do so is not a penalty unless the team is trying to freeze the kicker, which Seattle was not doing — they were just trying to get the extra player off the field.
The refs stopped the game, and after conferring, the officials decided not to grant Seattle a timeout, but also didn’t penalize the Seahawks for having too many men on the field. By stopping the game when they shouldn’t have, the referees cost Dallas a critical opportunity. If the game was allowed to play out, Dallas likely would have snapped the ball before the Seattle player had run off, resulting in a penalty and meaning that instead of a 35-yard field goal attempt, the Cowboys would have had a first and 10 from the Seattle 12-yard line.
After the game, official Carl Cheffers admitted to the media that his crew had made a mistake.
“We just made a mistake and we just put the ball back where it was and started things back up again without granting the timeout. The second issue on that play is the defense with 12 men on the field. We ruled that he was trying to get off the field. We were going to allow him every opportunity to get off, waiting for the snap to happen. Obviously the snap did not happen.”
The mistake obviously hurt Dallas in a major way, but it’s tough to put the loss in the hands of one bad call that came in the first half. The outcome was much more likely the result of the team’s completely stagnant offense, which put up just 97 passing yards.
(Via ESPN.com)
