2023 NFL Regular Season Through Super Bowl LVIII

[Fowler2]

Eh, the Lions will probably lose to the Rams or Seahawks at home in the wildcard round. 

[GDAWG]

Jerry Jones finally righted a wrong by allowing Jimmy Johnson in the Cowboys Ring of Honor.  It will be interesting to see who's next.  

[Sykotyk]

2 hours ago, BBTV said:

This, if true, is stupid:

 

They ANNOUNCE who reports as eligible, not only on the mic, but also to the players.  You can't fake it out like that.  If that's what the Lions were trying to do, then they're idiots.  They worked themselves into a shoot, brother.

 

EDIT:

Goff confirmed that 68 reported and 70 was a decoy.  The ref thought that 70 reported, but he didn't - and wouldn't have had to based on where he was lined up.  That's just freakin' stupid, for the reasons I said.  You can't have a decoy when the whole thing is announced.  

Because, I'm sure, Cowboys did their film study and saw that 70 was the usual OT to declare as eligible. Regardless the number announced, and where they line up, you're expecting every defender to hear the announcement, remember the number, see the formation, and follow through with it.

 

They obviously THOUGHT 68 was eligible because they covered his route like he was eligible. You don't do that if you don't think he's eligible.

[Kramerica Industries]

8 hours ago, BBTV said:

I think the blame falls on number 58, not 68.

 

68 is going over to report, but 58, who's fat ass has no business over there, is shielding the ref from 68.  All the ref could see is 70.

 

They're beating this to death and showing replays over and over, and nobody is mentioning that 58 is there for no reason, and IMO is the one that probably caused the issue.

 

Dan Campbell said that they went over the play with the refs before the game - which is totally normal - and the refs said it was OK.  But then he claims they told him that only one player is allowed to report?  That's simply not true.

 

At the end of the day, it falls on 68, who should have ensured that the ref looked at him and was like "I got you", or told him again when he wasn't announced as eligible.  But I think it was 58 that prevented the ref from hearing, and had he not been there, Detroit wins the game.  I don't think Dallas played defense any differently whether they announced 68 as eligible or not.

 

#58 Sewell isn't over there for no reason whatsoever. If he's over by the referee, it's because he was instructed to be over there.

 

In all likelihood, he was there along with Decker and Skipper to try and confuse the defense. I mean, the referee does have to disclose to the defense any players reporting as eligible who would otherwise be assumed ineligible, but this stuff still happens very quickly. More importantly, Dallas already called a timeout, so if anybody got confused on defense, they would be penalized if they needed to call a second timeout (would've moved the ball to the 1-yardline). Furthermore, look at the formation initially, and Sewell was split wide before motioning back into the line. In addition, in most tackle eligible situations, it tends to be the "extra" tackle (I don't know a better way to phrase this right now) who is that tackle eligible (after all, they're in a position usually occupied by a tight end, 3rd man away from the center). Usually your tackle eligible won't be a normal tackle because it leaves your line extremely unbalanced.

 

In any case, #58 Sewell and #68 Decker were the two players on each end of the line, #70 Skipper wasn't even lined up in a position to be an eligible receiver, so of course he would have no reason to report. However, the moment referee said #70 was the tackle eligible - and only #70 - the play was f--cked no matter what happened. If an OL doesn't explicitly report as eligible, then they're assumed ineligible, so the Cowboys had no reason at all to concern themselves about Decker being a passing option on that play, so if that play had stood as a 2PC for the Lions, then the Cowboys would be the ones with a grievance on that play. Either way, somebody was getting screwed.

 

To make matters even worse, look at the thumbnail of the video the NFL uploaded for the game.

 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lions+cowboys+ending

 

("Crazy ending"; it would be useless to embed here because it just gives a gray box saying "can't watch on this website", and I don't feel like screenshotting and uploading to Imgur.)

 

A pissed off Dan Campbell reacting to getting screwed by the referees. This league is shameless.

 

[Dalcowboyfan92]

This whole situation wouldn't have happened if McCarthy would stop being an idiot and run the ball. Was the fumble last week so scary it's given you an adverse reaction to running the ball? It was a freak play; something that may only happen once every one hundred times that play is run. Heck, even a kneeldown could have worked.

 

Would it be good sportsmanship? Not really. But, they had one timeout left and a little over a minute left. You should be doing everything in your power to win the game. They'd have about 30 seconds left to score a touchdown and try to win that way.

 

It doesn't matter. No team from the NFC is beating San Francisco; they're all going to fight amongst themselves to see who earns the right to lose to them in the NFC Championship.

[See Red]

Actually a pretty brilliant play by the Lions if the officials didn’t completely screw it up.  I imagine they’re trying to confuse Dallas into hearing the number end with an 8 and thinking it’s that Sewell is reporting eligible.  #70 pretty clearly never talks to the official as the official is walking away before he even gets there.

 

 The thing that still doesn’t make sense is that if they believed #68 to be ineligible, it should have immediately been flagged as an illegal formation since the last guy on the line has to be eligible and #68 has to report to be eligible.  But they didn’t.

 

 

[BBTV]

I still don't get trying to trick the defense into thinking someone else was eligible.  They're not looking at who's talking to the referees.  They're worried about getting their play call, recognizing the formation, and catching their breath.

 

Even if the defense only heard "something 8" from the announcement, they should quickly scan and see 68 there in an eligible position. These are pro players, they should be able to see that quickly.

 

Trying to trick by sending three players to the referee is harry high-school scat.  Even if 70 is reporting all game long anyway, which is normal just for formation legality regardless of whether he's a target or not, they're not going to trick a professional defense (unless there's some real dummies out there, which is a fair assumption in many cases, but I don't get that sense from the Cowboys.) Especially on 2-pt conversions, where defenses are trained to look for tricks.

 

There's failure all around.  68 should have gotten some kind of acknowledgement from the referee.  The play shouldn't have called for three guys to be over there, which ended up causing the confusion in the first place.  If it was my team, I'd be absolutely livid at the referee, but objectively, we can't hear what was actually said to the refs and until we do, I think the blame has to go both ways.

 

 

 

 

[See Red]

I mean, you say that but the play worked. Maybe Dallas should have recognized that the receiver was off the line and #68 was in an eligible position but they were still late to cover him. The official’s mistake would be halfway understandable if he said Sewell reported instead of the guy who didn’t actually talk to him.

 

And then there’s the fact that Campbell talked to the officials about this specific play and how they would run it if this situation came up before the game.

 

The Lions did everything right on this play. They shoulder zero blame here. 

[BBTV]

17 minutes ago, See Red said:

I mean, you say that but the play worked. Maybe Dallas should have recognized that the receiver was off the line and #68 was in an eligible position but they were still late to cover him. The official’s mistake would be halfway understandable if he said Sewell reported instead of the guy who didn’t actually talk to him.

 

And then there’s the fact that Campbell talked to the officials about this specific play and how they would run it if this situation came up before the game.

 

The Lions did everything right on this play. They shoulder zero blame here. 

 

It's not the official's responsibility to assume who's supposed to report, even if they're given the heads up.  What if Detroit decided to call a different play in that situation?  With all the scuitiny on the refs, had they gotten that wrong, that would have been catastrophic (though ironically what we actually got was equally catastrophic.)  I've never been in those pre-game meetings so I'm not sure what agreements are made, but there's still possibly some blame on 68 if he didn't get the ref to explicitly acknowledge him.  It's similar to if a coach were to casually drop a red challenge flag without ensuring it's visible to the ref.

 

As for not covering 68, I know I'm making a lot of assumptions here, but I'm not sure if Dallas would have covered him anyway (they probably would have, but we've seen plenty of trick plays where an eligible guy goes uncovered - the Philly Special comes to mind, as does Vabral's plays for the Patriots.)

 

You're not wrong at all, I just don't think it's quite as black and white.

 

 

[BBTV]

Yep it's on the ref.  

 

And what's with the new rules on editing posts?  And all the Capchas?

 

Post isn't embedding, but the crew is being demoted. 

 

https://x.com/_MLFootball/status/1741489658641420577?s=20

[See Red]

The other thing to note is that you can’t report for another player.  So 68 has to be reporting himself. Just a huge mistake by the ref. Pretty sure this crew did that controversial Chiefs game a few weeks back.

 

Would there not be audio of this?  Seems like everything is mic’d these days. 

[Kramerica Industries]

1 hour ago, BBTV said:

Trying to trick by sending three players to the referee is harry high-school scat.  Even if 70 is reporting all game long anyway, which is normal just for formation legality regardless of whether he's a target or not, they're not going to trick a professional defense (unless there's some real dummies out there, which is a fair assumption in many cases, but I don't get that sense from the Cowboys.) Especially on 2-pt conversions, where defenses are trained to look for tricks.

 

How is trying to trick the defense through administrative stuff like that any different than trying to trick the defense through gadget plays? I'm not really seeing the problem here. The defense might be coached up to be on the look out for sneaky stuff, but that doesn't mean they're always going to catch it when it happens. I think it's worth noting again that Dallas had just called a timeout, and they probably wanted to keep the last one no matter what just in case Detroit converted their 2PA, so if anybody got lost on defense even for a moment in trying to figure out assignments, they were out of luck and having to hope for the best. 

 

Obviously whether it would've worked or not, we have no idea, because the referee declared the wrong player eligible. We can't know if Dallas would've successfully defended the play or not if they knew Decker was eligible to receive a pass. 

[BBTV]

1 hour ago, Kramerica Industries said:

How is trying to trick the defense through administrative stuff like that any different than trying to trick the defense through gadget plays? I'm not really seeing the problem here.

 

I'm all for tricking defenses, but in that case the ref is supposed to announce it over the PA and to the defense, so it just seems silly to me to risk the confusion when the "trick" is going to be clearly explained.  Again, it looks like the Lions were 100% fine here and the refs 100% wrong.

 

 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Something interesting: Buffalo's last 1 pm EST start was home against Miami in week 4.

 

That's 11 straight weeks of late games, Thursday games, international games, Sunday nights, Monday nights, late games, etc.

 

I remember years and years of 1 pm starts for an entire season with maybe a West coast or pity ESPN game thrown in.

[BBTV]

we're at 1:50 left in the first half.  The Eagles haven't run a single play in the 2nd quarter.

[BBTV]

Eagles up 21-6, but have been completely outplayed by the Cardinals.  One TD on a pick-6 where the receiver ran the wrong route and the DB had an uncontested catch, one TD off of a deflection (after a trick play was necessary just to keep the drive alive).  Cardinals have moved the ball at will, and nearly every one of Hurts' passes is a fire-drill scenario.  Congrats to whoever gets this crap-ass bunch of losers in the playoffs.  The only way to lose to the Eagles is to beat yourself.

[TrueYankee26]

Eagles game is now 21-all. They will need more panic buttons in the Delaware Valley because the ones that exist have to be broken now

[dont care]

4 hours ago, BBTV said:

I still don't get trying to trick the defense into thinking someone else was eligible.  They're not looking at who's talking to the referees.  They're worried about getting their play call, recognizing the formation, and catching their breath.

 

Even if the defense only heard "something 8" from the announcement, they should quickly scan and see 68 there in an eligible position. These are pro players, they should be able to see that quickly.

 

Trying to trick by sending three players to the referee is harry high-school scat.  Even if 70 is reporting all game long anyway, which is normal just for formation legality regardless of whether he's a target or not, they're not going to trick a professional defense (unless there's some real dummies out there, which is a fair assumption in many cases, but I don't get that sense from the Cowboys.) Especially on 2-pt conversions, where defenses are trained to look for tricks.

 

There's failure all around.  68 should have gotten some kind of acknowledgement from the referee.  The play shouldn't have called for three guys to be over there, which ended up causing the confusion in the first place.  If it was my team, I'd be absolutely livid at the referee, but objectively, we can't hear what was actually said to the refs and until we do, I think the blame has to go both ways.

 

 

 

 

68 did get a verbal acknowledgement from the ref, the ref looked right at him nodded and said “ok” to him. What more acknowledgement does he need?

[FiddySicks]

Haha oh cool the Bucs just laid an egg against the Saints, now have to beat the Panthers in the final game to get into the playoffs. I’m not worried about them blowing that one at all. Nope, no siree, not worried one tiny little bit!

 

I hate this team

[BBTV]

3 minutes ago, TrueYankee26 said:

Eagles game is now 21-all. They will need more panic buttons in the Delaware Valley because the ones that exist have to be broken now

 

I used to think that they had the most talent in the league.  No worse than 3rd.  I used to feel that it was crap coaching that was leading to this disaster.  But it's all of it.  It's coaching on offense, and it's talent and coaching on defense.

 

The whole lot needs to go.  Siriani, who's just a cheerleader and guy who drops F-bombs but can't actually coach, Brian Johnson who's Jalen's hand-picked homie, and whoever the hell is running the defense.  Clean house.  Howie can eat a fart too for what he did to the defense.  Sure, we thought that re-signing Bradbury while restructuring Slay was a coup, but he needs to be smarter than fans and know that they are both old and done.

 

Screw them.  Last year's record was legit.  This year's is as hollow as anyone's has ever been.

 

At this point they're not only embarrassing themselves, but they're embarrassing everyone associated with the organization.

 

Back to the referees - how can a receiver grab the DB by the collar and pull him into him and it's PI on the DB?  Whatever.  Screw these sorry-ass jagoffs.