NFL 2015 Season Week 2 Picks

Crazy ending to the Thursday night game.

Towards the end of the Vikings/Lions game the Vikings stopped the Lions on 4th down. It looked like the spot was short of the line of gain. Evidently before the refs signaled anything, including that the ball was live start the play clock signal, moved the chains, or what have you, the Lions rushed to the ball that had been spotted for measurement and simply ran another play. The refs allowed this play to happen in a moment of total confusion, and then, for reasons that confound me, simply shrugged off the misunderstanding and allowed the Lions to continue on as if that illegal play was their first down play. The Lions would go on to score.

Everyone seemed to think the refs would catch the wrath of the NFL for allowing such a debacle on what was really a handful of procedural blunders, but cut to 20 or so hours later, and there's scant evidence on the internet that this even happened.

Do you have a video to link? I'm going to guess that if it had been a more consequential part of the game it would have gotten more attention. Because the Lions were down by 16 with 2 minutes left and had no impact on the result of the game, it was overlooked by the media at large. Not to mention that I believe the NFL generally issues statements about officiating mistakes later in the week anyway. Perhaps we'll hear more about this later. Or, perhaps it wasn't as bad as you had thought and no one will ever look at it again.

In my attempts to find that play you mentioned, I found this:
http://nyt4thdownbot.com/

It's a look at every 4th down scenario for the past week and what the should did/should have done based on probability of making a field goal or converting the 1st down. Pretty neat.

Jeremy showed me this website yesterday after the Patriots/Bills game. I thought the Patriots should've gone for it at the end of the game while deep in the red zone instead of kicking a field goal that put them up by 8, but then gave the ball back to the Bills with plenty of time. The 4th down bot agreed with me!

I follow the bot on twitter, which I would suggest you do, it's good stuff.

As for the Viking play, there's really nothing where "as bad as" applies. It's a thing that happened, there aren't degrees.

Edit: The only possible thing would be is if they just outright called it a first, which is equally as inexcusable given the spot/situation, doesn't account for the confusion, lack of signals, or the conference of the refs after the Lions ran their 5th down play.

What I meant was maybe your what you think you saw wasn't as bad as it actually was. I'm assuming you are going on memory here and not with video proof in front of you. Maybe the stick or the orange arrow or the first down line were just off compared to where the line actually was. I've seen that happen before where it looks like a spot might be close and they just move the chains without a thought. But everything else you mention about the play seems unfortunate too if it indeed happened the way you are remembering it.

It was full on confusion, not merely me thinking I saw it be short but otherwise went unnoticed. No one had any idea what was going on, the announcers commented on how no one signaled anything (which they miss frequently), the chains didn't move, the refs were confused what to do about it, and so on. Then, once the Lions ran 5th down the refs just seemed to think there was nothing they could do to clear up any miscommunication they had, because even a play that shouldn't be evidently can't be undone to figure out what happened prior.

Best case scenario a first down signal went unnoticed by everyone except Stafford in a situation where not measuring is insanity.

Edit: For fairness, I'm not certain it WASN'T a first. It was one of those moving backwards, where are they going to mark possession catches. But to get there should have taken a review, given the spot, and there's basically no way anything should have happened without a measurement.

Here's a screen grab of the spot, unfortunately Sunday ticket trims all the stuff from between plays, which is the meat of what we want in this case.

http://imgur.com/hupFo6G

Seems like at least measuring that is in order.

Woof. Maybe the Andrew Luck MVP campaign begins next week. I think it's quite possible the Colts have faced two of the better defenses, but even still. Aaron Rodgers probably won't have this many ints all year.