The Los Angeles Rams and Minnesota Vikings met on Monday night in the final game of Wild Card Weekend in Arizona, where the NFL moved the game due to the ongoing fires that have devastated Los Angeles county over the past week.
Despite the change to being a neutral site game, the Rams got off to a hot start taking a 10-0 lead on the Vikings in the first quarter. Minnesota would settle down a bit and got their first points on the board early in the second quarter to cut it to a touchdown deficit. On the ensuing Rams drive, the first controversial play of the game took place when Matthew Stafford got swarmed by Vikings defenders and the ball popped out and was returned for a touchdown.
Stafford was insistent he was throwing the ball, and the review showed him fully bent over and kind of option-pitching the ball straight into the ground in front of him.
While the officials ruled it an incompletion upon review, not everyone was convinced that should’ve been given as a pass, with even Peyton and Eli Manning, who are always pro-quarterback, not buying that it should’ve counted as a pass over on the Manningcast (video here).
Eli: I think Stafford’s saying he threw it. I don’t know, that’s not a throw right? I don’t think you can say…
Peyton: He didn’t…Uh-uh. Uh-uh. Uh-uh.
Eli: I don’t think you can say that’s a throw when you’re head’s down and that.
Bill Belichick knew right away that it’d get overturned, later explaining to the Manning brothers that there isn’t a single rule in the NFL that benefits the defense. The Mannings had some fun pointing out how it wasn’t even good form for an option pitch, as Stafford didn’t even get the thumb extended, and learned that the definition of an attempted pass was even more gratuitous than they imagined. That took a potential Vikings game-tying touchdown off the board, and while it was definitely an attempt at getting rid of the football by Stafford, calling it a “pass attempt” seems extremely generous.
