If you don’t check under the bed, you don’t see the monster.
It’s a strategy that may be being employed by NFL officials.
Everyone saw it, and immediately. Drew Brees threw wide to Tommylee Lewis on a crucial third-down play late in what would turn out to be a 26-23 overtime win by the Rams in the NFC Championship. Lewis was blown up by Los Angeles cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman long before the ball arrived; textbook pass interference. But no flags hit the turf and no whistles were blown, and a gobsmacked nation watched replay after replay, wondering how this could be.
Everyone saw the penalty except the ones who were officiating. And everyone saw the replays except the ones who needed to.
“It’s a judgment call by the officials. I personally have not seen the play,” was the response from referee Bill Vinovich, telling a pool reporter after the game that he was ignorant of the play everyone was freaking out about.
Asked if the timing — 1:49 to play, when a flag would have allowed New Orleans to milk the clock and try for a last-second field goal — affected the no-call, Vinovich said, “Absolutely not.”
The call decided the game. The Saints were forced into an early field goal that briefly pushed them ahead of the Rams, who drove down the field and kicked a field goal of their own. Los Angeles then grabbed the game in overtime, when its defense intercepted Brees and Greg Zuerlein’s 57-yard field goal was good.
But Zuerlein’s perfection, the Rams’ defense’s emergence and Jared Goff’s quiet effectiveness were reduced to footnotes after the controversy that isn’t going away.
The league’s office copped to the robbery, even if the officials themselves did not publicly.
“Just got off the phone with the league office,” Saints coach Sean Payton said. “They blew the call.”
Source: Read Full Article