{"id":333003,"date":"2025-12-07T15:19:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T15:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/333003\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T15:19:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T15:19:12","slug":"nfl-admits-to-erroneous-intentional-grounding-call-in-broncos-commanders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/333003\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL admits to erroneous intentional grounding call in Broncos-Commanders"},"content":{"rendered":"

To have any true credibility, NFL officiating must have transparency. Ideally, someone from the league would be available to the media every week to answer any\/all questions about calls made and not made in the prior weekend of games.<\/p>\n

For now, the NFL puts Walt Anderson on NFL Network every Sunday morning to address one or two hand-picked officiating decisions from the seven preceding days.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s better than nothing, but it\u2019s still closer to nothing than enough.<\/p>\n

Equally important in transparency is candor. On Sunday, Anderson acknowledged that the officials erred when calling a key intentional grounding penalty on Washington late in last Sunday night\u2019s Broncos-Commanders game.<\/p>\n

Said NBC rules analyst Terry McAulay immediately after the call was made: \u201cThis is absolutely not grounding. [Quarterback Marcus Mariota] throws it over the head of No. 17, who is outside the numbers. By rule, that is not intentional grounding.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rules back up McAulay\u2019s interpretation<\/a>. If the quarterback throws the ball in the direction of a receiver who is outside the numbers, it doesn\u2019t matter it he overthrows the receiver. In theory, the quarterback could throw the ball out of the stadium and it wouldn\u2019t be grounding.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Anderson agreed that the officials made a mistake.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t intentional grounding,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of different aspects to intentional grounding. So, you\u2019ve got to determine first, was the quarterback in or out of the pocket? Where did he throw the football? Did it get past the line of scrimmage? All of those factors have to come into play.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd some of them, we can help with replay, but some of them will not. So you can see the underlay, which is defining the pocket. The quarterback, he does not quite get out of the pocket, so he\u2019s now got to throw the ball in the direction of a receiver, which it does. It goes right over number 17, McLaurin\u2019s head, but unfortunately, the officials did not feel that the player was outside the number. That\u2019s not something that replay can help with. We can help with in or out of the pocket, but we can\u2019t help with the position of a player relative to being inside or outside the numbers, and that\u2019s the part of the rule that\u2019s critical, that would have been able for replay to be able to make that not a foul.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anderson then expressed hope that the rules will be tweaked to allow for the use of replay review on that specific point \u2014 whether the receiver was outside the number. <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, that\u2019s how the replay rules typically change. The league experiences a clear example of where it would have been useful, and then the league expands the rules to make it reviewable moving forward.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not an ideal way to do business. In lieu of imagining every situation in which it could be helpful to make replay review available proactively, the league reacts to situations in which it learns what it already should have known.<\/p>\n

And if the flag had been picked up (as it should have been), the Commanders would have an enhanced chance to avoid overtime by scoring a game-winning touchdown, in lieu of a game-tying field goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To have any true credibility, NFL officiating must have transparency. Ideally, someone from the league would be available…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-333003","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}