Illegal Forward Pass Ruling in SD-PIT Game
 

Here's what the NFL.com play-by-play says:

1-10-SD 21 (:05) (Shotgun) 17-P.Rivers pass short middle to 21-L.Tomlinson to SD 24 for 3 yards. Lateral to 89-C.Chambers to SD 26 for 2 yards (43-T.Polamalu). FUMBLES (43-T.Polamalu), RECOVERED by PIT-43-T.Polamalu at SD 12. 43-T.Polamalu for 12 yards, TOUCHDOWN. The Replay Assistant challenged the backward pass ruling, and the play was REVERSED. (Shotgun) 17-P.Rivers pass short middle to 21-L.Tomlinson, dead ball declared at SD 26 for 5 yards. PENALTY on SD-21-L.Tomlinson, Illegal Forward Pass, 0 yards, enforced at SD 5.

After the review, the referee (Scott Green) seemed confused as to the ruling, initially stating that the touchdown stood. Right before the extra point attempt, all the officials got together. Then, Green ruled that there was no touchdown and the game was over.

The pass in question was attempted by Tomlinson and caught by Chris Chambers. Is it correct for the play to end there?

I believe the penalty ended up being accepted by PIT so they would not have to run a PAT. That takes the TD off the board.

I believe.

But the ball also may be dead in the last two minutes if its illegally forwarded.

I'll leave it to the football guys :)

Oh, wow. That is a very good point. I didn't notice that the play-by-play says the penalty was accepted. However, I don't think that's what the referee said on the field. (It was hard to hear.)

I don't know what the rules are in the final two minutes for an illegal forward pass. For a fumble in the last two minutes, if the defense recovers, they can advance it.

Also, it says "dead ball declared at SD 26 for 5 yards," which seems to indicate that the ball would be dead even if the penalty was declined.

According to our friends at profootball.com the ref made a mistake.

ProFootballTalk.com - REFEREE ADMITS ERROR AT END OF CHARGERS-STEELERS GAME

“The rule was misinterpreted,” Green said. “We should have let the play go through in the end, yes. It was misinterpreted that instead of killing the play we should have let the play go through.”

I don't see how he can claim the rule was misinterpreted. His crew simply remembered the play incorrectly. The illegal forward pass was caught, and they thought it wasn't. But it's good to see him take responsibility, even though it appeared to be his crew who talked him into making the wrong ruling. He had it right at first.

Disclaimer: Football official with no NFL rules experience - discussion is based on football fundamentals

1) Play continues on a completed illegal forward pass
2) While a backward pass appears to be treated as a fumble there is a distinct difference; a fumble is an involuntary loss of player possession while a backward pass is a voluntary loss of player possession - two distinct occurrences and treated differently
3) The result of the play was a TD for Pittsburgh
4) Acceptance of the penalty requires an untimed down for SD (Quarter/Half may not end with an accepted penalty)
5) Declining the penalty forces the result of the play to stand (Pgh would surely decline the IFP penalty for the TD)
6) The Point After Touhdown (PAT) is an untimed down that must be completed
7) Replay Official/Referee/Crew choked
8) Score 17/18 Pittsburgh - 10 SD
9) None of these seven officials will work play-off or super bowl games this season
10) Reliance on the rules knowledge of announcers is - at best - foolhardy Example: lateral - no such definition in any football rules manual

I believe everything you said is correct.

How are they treated differently?

Not true, at least not under FED rules. There will be no untimed down if the penalty includes a loss of down provision.

Again, not true under FED.

Because, as a wise man once said, "Announcers are idiots."

Under NFL rules, I believe the PAT would still have been attempted. At least, they were lining up for it.

In response to waltjp (NFL disclaimer still on notice)

2) Backward pass/Fumble - National Federation (NF) has no restrictions on the recovering team advancing either, I believe the NFL has some restrictions regarding advancing fumbles in some situations - I am unaware of any NFL restrictions on advancing recovered backward passes.

4) Correct (NF) - Loss of Down (LOD) penalties negate an untimed down requirement for last play of quarter/half. However; I am unsure if IFP is an NFL LOD penalty. Good point

6) Correct in part (NF rules) - individual state associations can, and do, require PATs on game ending TDs. Pennsylvania so requires because Gardner Points are used as tie breakers for play-off spots and other states do as well.

SO - some folks with rule knowledge actually pay attention - this is good

Kudos to walt - keep posters honest

The officials blew it and admitted it.

The first "lateral" was ruled the illegal forward pass. For some reason, the crew declared the play dead at that point. The IFP was caught by the offense and advanced followed by the backwards pass that was fumbled, recovered by the defense and advanced for the score. Not sure where the confusion comes from, if they thought the IFP touched the ground or if an IFP becomes dead immediately?

I wonder how much hate mail Scott Green is going to get from people who picked Pittsburgh in the spread. Wasn't 4.5 or 5? On an illegal forward pass if completed you throw a flag and let they play continue. If went incomplete you would blow it dead right? It would 5 yards and loss of down.

So, are they saying the Steeler's didn't get the option to decline or accept the penalty?

Questions on this topic:

1) Lets say LT threw an IFP and it was caught. And the play goes on. Since it was an IFP and the ball was caught the defense can either accept or decline the penalty? Correct?

2) If the IFP was dropped then you cannot accept or decline the penalty. The ball is dead. Correct?

3) How does an NFL official getting paid six figures for a half year of work not know the rules? Plus he has like 5 other helpers and a replay official. Pretty bad. Correct?

Why do people feel like coming to officiating message boards to bash officials? Correct?

The issue on the play was that there were two attempted backward passes on the last play. The first was an illegal pass as it went forward. The second was a backward pass that also hit the ground. The officials were confused as to which pass was illegal (forward). They incorrectly determined that the illegal pass hit the ground and thus was incomplete. Within minutes they determined that they got the two passes confused and Pittsburgh should have been awarded the TD.

Green takes the hit for not remembering what all happened during the replay. He saw over and over again what happened on the play but was then talked into changing his mind. He would have saved himself just by going over and taking another look.

By rule, after the official leaves the review booth he can't return to review the same play. This was discribed by head of officials on ESPN.

So, if SD had scored a TD on the last play but was flagged for holding and Pittsburgh accepted then SD would have gotten an untimed down?

I thought that rule (at least in the NFL) only applied to defensive penalties.

The ammount of money he gets paid doesn't have anything to do with the fact that he is a human. Humans make mistakes. You'd think that being a millionaire would put a stop to the false starts and other bone headed fouls the players make, but that don't seem to stop the Dallas Cowboys from averaging about 5 false starts per game.

'cause we have humans and not robots calling games.

The guy from San Diego notwithstanding, everybody has kicked a call at some point. Some are bigger than others.

lol.....:)

Read these!
 

NFL News Feed - The latest breaking news from across the league

Confusion Leads To Strange Finish In Pittsburgh - ESPN Video

Dan Patrick.com

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slu...v=ap&type=lgns

1) Completed pass, legal or illegal, the ball remains alive. The offended team has the right to accept or decline the penalty for the IFP. The options are decline the penalty and accept the results of the play, Or accept the penalty and re-play the down (I am unsure if the NFL code defines and IFP as a loss of down penalty). Decline = Result of the play - TD Pittsburgh. Accept the penalty (two potential results) 1) if IFP is loss of down - game over - score 11 to 10; if not LOD SD get an untimed down.

2) If the IFP was incomplete, flag, whistle, down over, enforce penalty based on D's acceptance/declination. Action after the incomplete pass was action with a dead ball.

3) I'll agree with the basic statement - this mistake is unacceptable for the NFL. That said, I'll bet every official (irrespective of NF, NCAA, NFL) has at some point, due to unusual circumstances and unanticipated events become twisted and choked on a basic call by over thinking and not stepping back and reciting the applicable football fundamentals.

I don't doubt that you are correct. However the review official could have buzzed down to recheck the facts as I would assume it is their first responsibility to get the ruling right. R wouldn't have to have gone in the booth to confirm which pass was which. I do see now that they are looking at changing some things to try to avoid this problem again.

I find it funny how often rules are changed to try to avoid repeating special situations that could have been covered earlier if odd situations had been thought about earlier.

I cannot believe that some are naive.

Some facts to ponder

1. Legal betters in Las Vegas had an $83 Million swing on the outcome of the game.

2. 13 Penalties on Pittsburgh to 1 for the Chargers. The pass interference call on the Steelers in the first / second quarter was simply a joke

3. The score was 11-10 - Steelers won so why even bother going over the play to begin with whether the call was right / wrong - It meant NOTHING at that point. The Chargers didn't care - They lost and the Steelers didn't care they ALREADY won.

4. IR's main use is to make certain that no team gets hosed - Not change the score to accomodate a point spread. There was absolutley no reason for the Replay official to even get involved with this.

It's funny in that some people accuse baseball players of taking steroids WITHOUT any HARD proof other than some testimony refuse to accept that there is something "shaky" that went on in the SD / Steelers game and the NFL is doing it's best to make it go away.

You know the saying "If it walks and talks like a duck"

We already had an NBA official who cheated the game. To think that he is the ONE and ONLY official ever to do that is IMO being Naive.

Pete Booth

You've gotta be kidding me. Pete I've always thought you were an upstanding umpire but are you really accusing NFL officials of cheating based upon flimsy "evidence" and much speculation?

Do you accuse MLB umpires of cheating when things go awry? By your logic, the MLB umpires threw the entire World Series based upon their performance this year.

It's bad enough we have fans, coaches, players and broadcasters accusing officials of cheating but now fellow officials? Unbelievable.

First things first

We are not talking about a bad call or things that went awry.

There was No call. For some strange reason which is still uknown the Replay official got involved.

It's not Flimsy when that type of money is involved and the ENTITE state of affairs in the game starting with the Penalty disparity.

It happened in the NBA. There is far more money bet on football games than basketball.

If it happend in the NBA what makes you think it cannot happen in Football. Do you really believe that he is the ONLY Official ever involved?

In addition, there really is NO VALID explanation for what happened at the end of the Pittsburgh / SD game.

Yes I am an offfical but I am also a human being (at least I think I am) and I am merely pointing out VALID events that happened in the game yesterday.

It's akin to steroid abuse in baseball. Other than some testimony and others admitting steroid use (because of pressure etc.) there really is no HARD evidence. Who believes Roger Clemens?

If you think that Roger Clemens took steroids (based upon inuendo or someone's testimony) then why isn't yesterday's events "fishy" at best

Pete Booth

Here is what happened. The booth buzzed the R and said the last play needed to be reviewed. Whether or not there was a illegal forward pass is one such play that may be reviewed. They reviewed the play and realized that there was an illegal forward pass but that the penalty would be declined by Pittsburgh. OK fine, line up for the PAT.

While lining up for the PAT, an onfield official runs in and confers with the Referee. The Referee announces that the illegal forward pass makes the ball dead. The easiest explanation for this is that they incorrectly thought the backward pass that hit the ground was in fact the one that was ruled forward. That would make the ball dead. They simply screwed it up on the field.

That explanation makes a lot more sense than an onfield official running in and telling the R, "Hey this will mean that Pittsburgh covers the spread. We have to overrule this!"

A screwup this big is going to expose the crew and league to much criticism and I highly doubt they would intentionally open themselves up it. To do so in the same year as the Hoculi incident and other high profile incidents would be very foolish.

Let's take the rest point by point:

Similar with every other nationally televised football game, I'm sure.

Completely irrelevant. You've never had a lopsided game where one pitcher can find the strike zone and the other can't? If a team commits more fouls, they will be assessed more penalties.

I didn't see the foul so you will have to enlighten us. Why was it a joke? Did it not fit into one of the categories of pass interference or is that just your opinion?

Because it is the rule and the accuracy of the score and the statistics depend upon it.

That's a mighty big speculation on your end and you have no proof to backup that is why this play was reviewed. This play was reviewed by the booth because they saw a pass that looked forward and they were required by rule to review it.


So how can the entire state of affairs be at risk over this play when you already said the game was already decided?

Donaghy got away with what he did for so long because he made subtle foul calls that affected his games by shaving points. Not by changing the entire spread of a game in one call. By all accounts, he acted as a lone official. This is an entire crew we're talking about here, so not only would the entire field crew need to be in on the fix but so would the replay officials. Entire crews have been known to blow calls in the heat of the moment. This time it just happened to effect the spread.

I never said it couldn't happen in football but I would hope you would have more than flimsy evidence before impugning the integrity of this crew. You're not even content to give them the benefit of the doubt, something I would hope you would afford another official.

Answer this question, why does the NFL care about the point spread of this particular game?

SDS should be all over this.

Welpe, you must have been bored this afternoon because that clown didn't deserve that much of your time. :)

You're right...slow day. Besides when I get writing on a subject, its hard to stop sometimes. ;)

Arguing with a fool is always a losing proposition, even when you do it on a point by point basis. If every time a bet doesn't work out the way the bettor wanted, we are going to run towards some silly conspiracy theory, we're going to be spending a lot of time on losing bettor's whining.

What continues to amaze me is that some people still think that this whole "instant replay" idea is going to reach perfection. The gamblers who pissed and moaned because they bet on losing choices before instant replay, are still whining and complaining and no matter what technology does to bring decisions down to a finer and finer point, they will continue to complain when their hunches don't pan out.

The real fools, in this process, are the rest of us who bother to listen to this garbage. Bettors bet because they have convinced themselves they are smarter than everyone else and can handicap anything to a point where they think they know, better than anyone else, how things will turn out.

The smart bettors know that that there are always unanticipated consequnces lurking and factor that into the risk-reward ratio and take results that prove them wrong in stride. The un-smart (didn't want to say stupid) bettors fail to anticipate anything other than ego and are ill prepared to accept that they "chose wrong". If they can't deal with picking wrong, they should stop picking rather than waste everybody's time looking for fantasy conspiracies.

People who bet can't comprehend how other people can be totally impartial, and trying to explain it to them is an absolute waste of time, why bother.

You make a good point, Al. Perhaps part of me was hoping I could reach a fellow official.

Chalk all of this up to yet another reason I don't gamble.

First off I would like to state that you don't have a clue as to what you are talking about. I thought you were a sports official but once again you have proven yourself to be an average fanboy idiot.

Is that important? Is that less than normal? More than normal?

So one team has more fouls at the end of the game and that means the officials are cheating; nice conclusion Pete.

What happens when you are working a baseball game and one pitcher strikes out 18 batters and the other team's pitcher only strikes out 3? I guess that means you were cheating to help that guy get all those strikeouts.

An incomplete forward pass ends the down. So there could have been time left on the clock when the down should have ended.

See what I wrote above. There may have been time left on the clock. You don't know what you are talking about.

Secondly, just because the clock runs out does not mean everything doesn't matter. I bet you would be on here complaining if the play was not reviewed. You would be here saying that the NFL should have review the play to look for an IFP and the only reason they did not was because they were trying to change the outcome of the game. Either way you would be complaining; stop looking for reasons to complain.

See above. There may have been time on the clock. Also the officials must get the play right in the end. If the ball was dead when the Steelers "scored" then they should not be awarded the score.

Complaining about the number of fouls each team has committed is a flimsy argument. I'm guessing you never officiaited basketball.

What happened in the NBA? A NBA official gave insider information to gamblers. Nothing has ever come out saying that he ever got any calls wrong during a game. You are accusing 7 on field NFL officials as well as the replay official of cheating to affect the outcome of the game, something which never happened in the NBA.

Once again, you don't know what you are talking about. There was more than one reason why the replay official had to stop the game. There was an IFP and the officials later conferred and got it wrong when they were figuring out which pass hit the ground.

No, you're an uninformed fanboy. Obviously going by what you wrote you do not understand what you are talking about, all the way from football rules to what NBA official Tim D. went to jail for.

NFL Rule: Rule 4, Section 3, Article 11- If at the end of any period, time expires while the ball is in play, time is not called until the down ends. (c) If there is a foul by the offense, there shall be no extension of the period. If the foul occurs on the last play of the half, no score made by the offense is counted.

Whoa Pete, that made me bad. No offense, but I don't think I'd like to work with you if that's how you roll.

According to your logic, you'd think I was taking a bribe from a coach because he was rich, and his team struck out 15 batters while the other one struck out just 1. And, when there was a close play at the plate, I had his runner safe. And when we had **** hit the fan on a wierd play, and we kicked it, it went for his team.

Sometimes, these things just happen.

I, frankly, am not going to throw that crew under the bus. I don't do football, but I consider them my brother official.

As for Donaghy, that punk can rot in jail as far as I'm concerned, a true disgrace to the profession.

And frankly, so are you right now Pete - with absolutely no substantiated evidence you've tried to implicate a brother official. I'm not okay with that. At all.

Sorry to be harsh, I'm not trying to be Internet tough guy here. Its just an extremely strong position.

Football guys, sorry this now general officiating conversation has spilled onto your side of things. I like lurking over here... even though half the time I have NO idea what you're talking about :p

The smart bettors know that the bookmakers set the line in order to bring in approximately equal amounts of money on either side of any game. No matter how the game ends, bookies use the losers' money to pay off the winners. Bookies make their money on the cut, not the outcome, so they don't care who wins or how.

Only losers care how.

[QUOTE]
Tuss you are using the wrong logic.

Suppose you saw a Fellow Official calling pitches balls that were "right down Broadway" time after time for ONE team then had a different strike zone altogether for another.

It has happened and in our kneck of the woods these types of umpires were labeled "homers"


No ones's throwing anyone "under the bus" but pointing out facts that even the NFL has not explained. I was merely pointing out that in lite of Donaghy the idea of corruption exists.



Again I am NOT implicating anyone but presenting "another side" of events. If it happened in the NBA why not football where there is millions of dollars bet.

Sorry I hit a nerve but if a major league baseball umpire called pitches right down Broadway Balls for one team and a completely different zone for the other the same analogy would be drawn.

Pete Booth

So far the only example of a call which was wrong which you have cited was "The pass interference call on the Steelers in the first / second quarter was simply a joke"

Answer this question off the top of your head right now....what constitutes pass interference in the NFL?

I doubt you know what you are talking about when it comes to NFL rules and how they are enforced on the field. You're no different than some whining fanboy complaining about all the bad calls in the game last weekend.

LDUB, we're wasting our time. I'm sorry I even bothered responding.

Exactly, Batman. What people don't understand about how it really works. If you've "balanced your book," who wins and how is immaterial.

perfect!

Saw Pereira on NFL Network Wednesday. Now it makes a little more sense to me.

He said they're going to make sure the referee takes another official with him to the review tent and that they fill out a little form to keep the bookkeeping straight.

What's interesting with this is that MP said that some R's already took a fellow official to the hood with them. As far as I can recall, this is the first bookkeeping mistake in ~ 9 years.