The Draw Play

There was a discussion on the Discord a few weeks back about bad calls. In the discourse of bad calls, there is one argument you will always see. “One call does not decide a game”. This is true! Spiritually and technically. A team that is screwed over by a bad call, like say…the Saints in the NFCCG versus the Rams, can still have played the rest of the game so that this particular situation or call does not happen or matter.

It’s a cop-out dead-end point, to be honest, and I kind of hate it. It stops discussion of bad officiating in its tracks by placing the blame not on the problem, but the victims. Yes, every team could have theoretically played better and not put themselves in a position to get screwed. That’s a blanket point that solves nothing. So what if the Saints could have played better in that game. Yeah, they could have not choked away the game afterward, either, because even after the bad no-call they were still in good position to win. They still got hosed. It still damaged their chance to win through no fault of their own.

So we were trying to figure out what the worst call in NFL history is, and the best starting point should be plays that directly changed and visibly affected the direction and outcome of a game. The Saints/Rams is a good start since we are already here. Despite how egregious the missed call was, I do not maintain it as the worst in NFL history. It took the Saints from near-certain victory to…a game in which they had to keep fighting. It just made the outcome more uncertain for New Orleans. They still scored afterward. They still got another possession in overtime. They still got to play defense to stop the Rams, and failed. The Rams were not gifted the win, despite how Saints fans talk about it.

Most of the worst calls fall into this scenario. Almost certain victory is stripped from a team but not necessarily just given to the opposite team. The Tuck Rule is another example. The Raiders would have won if this impossibly stupid rule was not enforced to reverse the obvious fumble. But the call didn’t gift the Patriots the win. They still had to kick a field goal in a blizzard just to tie it and force overtime. The Raiders still had chances to win.

The Megatron no-catch versus the Bears and the Dez catch also fit. There is also the phantom DPI play from the Lions/Cowboys wildcard game that still infuriates me. They didn’t decide the game, they just severely damaged one team’s ability to win. Also pictured in the comic is the infamous Giants/49ers playoff game in which the Giants’ Rich Seubert was an eligible WR on a busted field goal play but was tackled. Instead of DPI, the Giants were called for an ineligible man downfield. The NFL later admitted they messed it up and at the very least the Giants and 49ers should have had offsetting penalties, resulting in a redo of the down. The Giants were stripped of a fair opportunity to win, but that doesn’t mean they would have made the kick. After all, they already botched one snap.

Fate would later balance the scales when in the 2011 NFCCG Ahmad Bradshaw fumbled against the 9ers but was called down by forward progress. Two wrongs do make a right! The right is me being happy. Yeah, that was definitely a fumble, and I’m shocked the Giants got away with it to this day.

The Forward Progress pictured in the comic is more infamous. The Titans were down to the Chiefs in the playoffs and Mariota gets sacked and stripped. For…some reason…the ref calls the play “forward progress”. Mariota would later throw a touchdown pass to himself and the Titans would win the game. This call makes zero sense to me, but it occurred in the 2nd quarter, so we can still say the Chiefs just blew it. This was Jeff Triplette’s final game as a ref. He is not missed.

What about the Ed Hochuli botch job in Denver/San Diego? This one gets forgotten a lot by everyone outside of the Something Awful football forums, where one poster’s reaction to it became a forum meme. The Broncos are in the redzone at the end of the game, needing to score. Jay Cutler butterfingers that shit and fumbles it away. Ed “Guns” Hochuli makes an error and blows it dead, thinking it was a forward pass. By rule, the play ending there prevents it from being overturned, giving the Broncos another chance. They score, they win, San Diego Fans explode. Again, it’s tight, but the Chargers still had a couple of opportunities to end it anyway despite the screwjob.

So we are left with 3 options that I can think of. The one you’ve never heard of occurs in 1961. The Dallas Texans are given one extra down to win the game after the Patriots fans cause a ruckus. None of the refs notice a Patriots fan run onto the field for this extra play. He literally causes the final pass to go incomplete by breaking it up. It was not called. We don’t know if the Texans catch the ball if the fan is absent, but damn. The Patriots. Fuck ’em.

The final two options both involve the Seahawks, funnily enough. The first case is from 1998. The Jets have 20 seconds left and Testaverde goes for a quarterback draw play (hell yeah). He does not appear to cross the line. The Refs, who have been kinda shit all game, call it a touchdown. Watching the replays, it appears Testaverde does not get the ball across the plane. This call pretty much directly won the game for New York and was so bad that the NFL re-instituted instant replay for the next season so that refs had a chance to check their work. This fuckup is the reason we get sweet, sweet replays and challenges to this day.

But my final call, an obvious choice, is what I deem the worst. The Fail Mary is the only play that literally decided a game for one team. If they call it a pick, Packers win. If they call it a touchdown, Seahawks win. The replacement refs call both on the play, but the head official gets the final ruling, and he deems it a catch. Replay shows that Golden Tate really has possession of Jennings and not the ball, while Jennings pretty clearly has possession of the ball. Instant chaos. This call was so embarassing that the very next day the scab refs get fired and the NFL caves to the referee union. It almost feels as if the NFL has held zero power over the officials since this moment. Every major change they’ve tried to implement (such as reviewable PI after the Saints/Rams debacle) has been met with resistance. We still don’t have full-time refs. We still don’t have a skyjudge. The rulebook gets worse. More and more people are convinced everything is rigged.

Now Super Bowl XL? Also featuring the Seahawks? That has an argument for the worst officiated game of all time. But maybe we can save that discussion for another day.

What I have learned from all this is the Seahawks are a chaos elemental and I need to respect them more.