It ended up being one of the biggest plays of the AFC Championship Game, and it was certainly the most confusing.

Before any rulings were made, the New England Patriots ran an errant football out of the hands of Jarrett Stidham and into the end zone. But then it was ruled the Denver Broncos QB had thrown incomplete but for intentional grounding.

The refereeing crew wasn’t done. Eventually, they changed their ruling, calling it a backward pass, and therefore a fumble.

But the Pats couldn’t actually return the ball to the end zone, because a whistle had blown. That makes it an erroneous whistle, and the officials gave New England the ball at the spot of recovery.

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A few plays later, the Pats’ Drake Maye ran in their only touchdown of the game in an eventual 10-7 win to advance to the Super Bowl.

The Athletic’s Mike Sando broke this play down in a column on Monday morning, and he points out that this call may have been entirely wrong:

Officials erred in blowing the whistle on the play, which seemed to help Denver by nullifying an apparent Patriots fumble return for a touchdown. But language in Rule 7, Section 2 Article 1(o), relating to an erroneous whistle while the ball is loose, seems confusing when it says, “the team last in possession may elect to put the ball in play at the spot where possession was lost, or to replay the down.”

Was New England the last team in possession, or was it Denver?

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Essentially, the way that rule reads suggests that it matters greatly when the whistle actually blew, because if it came before the recovery, it implies Denver would get the choice to replay the down.

Maybe the fact that it’s a clear and obvious recovery matters elsewhere from the rulebook, as it does with certain replay review situations. 

It also still wasn’t clear to everyone who analyzed the play afterward that it was even a backward pass to begin with.

It’s certainly a call that loomed large and went against the Broncos, a week after the big catch-turned-interception call against the Bills went in Denver’s favor.

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