[tmagan]

Looking at the play in question, Triplette signaled 'third down' but in a way with his arm upward and diagonally that could have been interpreted as a 'first down'. Some officials 'first down' signals are different, i.e. Hochuli's is a psuedo baseball ejection symbol for a 'first down'.

Triplette basically threw the chain gang under the bus in the post game which is a problem because the head linesman clearly gave a signal to the chain gang to move the chains. I believe he did that because he saw Triplette's confusing first down signal and assumed he meant 'first down'.

I know they didn't want to give the offense a free timeout, but the clock has to be stopped in this situation to get everything right because in a game like this, it doesn't effect the rest of the season, but if this were a playoff game, well as Al Michaels would say: There would be hell to pay.

There is also a photo on the internet while Shanahan was arguing that showed the chain gang less than pleased with the officials.