Disputed possession isn’t reviewable. If you say player X has the ball the replay can only agree or say nobody had the ball, it CAN’T say player Y had it.
There were a large quantity of very bad calls in that game, the final one being the worst. No official was in the right position to make the call, one official signaled an INT, one a TD, they allowed players and coaches to crowd the field, didn’t huddle to consult, and then made an irreversible call. Which is really the problem with the replacements, they don’t know the corner case rules, and they don’t know how to err on the side of caution. Had the signal been incomplete that could have been reversed on review (nobody caught it can be reversed to somebody caught it, and that somebody could be X or Y), and the regular refs understand this and in complex situations tend to lean to calls that can be reversed.
The tuck rule is a bad example, that was a bad rule correctly officiated. These guys are incorrectly officiating good rules.
“that was a bad rule correctly officiated”
Actually it was an insane rule that irrationally changed a pump fake into a forward pass. But even treating it like every other rule I don’t think it appplied, as it wasn’t at all clear to me that the ball was lost in the motion of tucking. How long did the Raiders have to wait after the pump fake to strip it? A year?
The Calvin Johnson thing is similar, in that they considered him spiking the ball as he got up to be part of the same motion as catching and landing with the ball. Which is stupid. I would cast this Hail Mary fall the same way, the reed’s inexperience on playing it safe notwithstanding. The reason the Tuck Rule game, the Johnson catch, and this game, among others, will be endlessly replayed is that the vagueries of the rulebook aside to the baked eye it looks like the absolute wrong call.
Granted, people also feel that way about legitimate plays like the Music City Miracle.