“A terrible officiating failure cost a team a trip to the Super Bowl.”
No it didn’t. Most sports are a game of execution. Football definitely is. If you execute every time, you win. If the offense scores on every play. And the defense on every series forces them to three an out or picks off a pass or forces a fumble, they win. Pure and simple, execution.
Mahones threw 2 interceptions and had a 69.0 rating. Weak. The Patriots ran for over 330 yards. And where the Patriots made their only real mistake was trying to milk the clock in the second half and letting KC get close.
Was it a bad call? Yes. Did the officials also miss the helmet hit? Yes. But that one call didn’t decide a game. That was decided in the first half when New England ran up a coastable score even though they got stupid in the second half.
The league and the media is spending a lot of air time trying to find excuses why teams win or lose. The officials are always an easy one to justify the player aura and to also justify their absurd salaries. Blaming the officials protects the failures of the players so it puts butts in the seats. The league has been doing it for years.
rwood
The earlier non-call would have been a 3rd down conversion for the Saints.
Watching with a room of Rams fans, everyone did agree that should have been a call. We are glad to see the Rams going, but we hate the asterisk.
And in the NHL they do hit up HQ in Toronto on plays, and it really doesn’t take that much time off the game. It’s pretty quick and I haven’t seen anything as radically dead wrong as this call.
I think the NFL Competition Committee may allow for a additional challenge flag with no restrictions on type of challenge in the last 90 seconds of each half.