Coach Sean Payton accepts responsibility and tenders his ……
After Further Review: Highs and Lows
Breaking down great and questionable officiating from Denver’s heartbreaking week 6 loss to the Chargers and dominating week 7 win over the Saints.
A quick note – last week we were unable to review the Broncos Chargers game in full, so as promised there are comments on that game this week, alongside comments from the Broncos Saints game.
After Further Review: Broncos vs Chargers:
Delay of Game
Umpire Carl Paganelli called a great delay of game penalty on safety Alohi Gilman late in the Broncos loss to the Chargers. Gilman tackled Javonte Williams and tried to hold him down to slow the play. Any action designed to deliberately slow down the game will be flagged as a delay of game. Most fans are familiar with running the play clock down to zero, but there are other circumstances when this penalty is properly called. When a returner signals fair catch, catches the ball, and then takes off running, delay of game will be called. When a player through deliberate action or (sometimes) negligence makes it significantly harder for the officials to get the ball properly marked delay should be called, or when a player prevents the other team from lining up. This is a rare call, but it was clearly correct. Gilman was trying to delay the game, and he was penalized harshly for it. I appreciated how Paganelli called the foul – it appeared that he got to the players, made two commands, and then flagged Gilman, which is exactly the timing and steps that perfect officiating should do in that situation.
Defensive Pass Interference and Offensive Pass Interference
The officials let the defensive backs and wide receivers get a little bit out of hand in the second half, and were more than a bit inconsistent with their calls of defensive pass interference and offensive pass interference. I had the same impression with defensive holding, but remember I do not evaluate defensive holding calls. A good example of the passive and inconsistent officiating came in the third quarter with about 7:25 left. Ja’Quan McMillian committed egregious defensive pass interference, which went uncalled. However, the ball was tipped, so by rule his pass interference would not have counted. If the covering official saw the tip, he was technically correct, but he communicated inconsistency. Better officiating would be to throw that flag and verify the tip before picking it up instead of not throwing it. This communicates to the players what conduct is acceptable and how players should perform, it does not need to delay the game. Being slick as an official was not incorrect there, but it nurtured inconsistencies among the players and within the officiating crew. The deep officials could have avoided more controversy late in the game by being more active and clear earlier in the game, and it was unfortunate to see this happen.
Official Evaluation
The spotting of the ball was good and consistent. I thought Carl Paganelli was particularly excellent during the hurry up. Tra Blake did a fine job as referee with no notable delays throughout the game. I marked five questionable calls and one bad call in this game. Four of the questionable calls benefitted the Chargers, and the bad call benefitted Denver. All but one of these calls were in the secondary. All things considered that is a reasonable game, but I have concerns about part of the officiating crew that do not spread to the rest of the crew.
After Further Review: Broncos vs Saints
Illegal Formation
The officials called Illegal Formation twice against New Orleans against Denver. These calls highlight a tendency that the officials have had this year. Officials are basically ignoring Illegal Formations caused by backs, tight ends, and wide receivers but are somewhat zealously enforcing them against offensive tackles. On the one hand this is wildly inconsistent based on the players involved and a bit annoying for that reason. On the other hand, receivers, backs, and tight ends generally are in formation improperly due to lack of focus and gain no advantage from it, but offensive tackles are out of formation almost exclusively for competitive advantage. I am curious how Mile High Report readers feel about the choice to emphasize only those players gaining advantage from their illegal formations.
Poll
How should officials call Illegal Formation?
Ineligible Downfield
Denver offensive lineman Ben Powers was called for Ineligible Downfield on what ended up being functionally the second to last Denver offensive play of the game. This penalty is often misunderstood by fans, so it is worth digging into what is going on.
Players are ineligible in two ways – by number and by position, and a valid offensive formation must have five ineligible players. These are almost always the offensive linemen. These players are ineligible to be the first person to touch a pass, and may not move too far beyond the line of scrimmage before a pass is thrown. It is a foul if his entire body is more than one yard beyond the line of scrimmage at the time a forward pass is thrown, unless he only moved downfield while engaged in blocking or being blocked.
Functionally when we see ineligible players downfield it is for one of four reasons (or a combination): 1) the defender they meant to block was too quick for them to make contact. 2) The offensive play broke down and the pass came out much later than expected or 3) confusion about play call or line location or 4) offensive design (RPOs necessarily put linemen in tough situations where they can just break the rules). Watching replay, it looks like Powers was a victim of a combination of 1) and 2).
A couple of notes on ineligible downfield penalties. First, the penalty is for being downfield when the pass is thrown, not when the pass is in air or caught. Last years Super Bowl had great consternation over the Christian McCaffrey touchdown because people thought that San Francisco had an ineligible downfield when he caught the pass. This was true, but only became true after the pass was released – the officials got it correct there. Second, there are exceptions to the rule for continuously blocking linemen and exceptions to that exception related to offensive pass interference. It potentially gets complicated, but the way the rules are currently enforced minimizes this complexity. Finally, Ineligible downfield is a brutal penalty to enforce for the officials. It requires officials to know where a player is in relation to the line of scrimmage at the time the pass is released and the officials are poorly positioned to get this penalty right. This is a situation where replay could get things much better than on the field officiating, because it allows a combination of angles that officials do not use (they could, but its only useful for judging this one relatively minor penalty).
Official Evaluation
This game was really impressive. My biggest note about the officiating crew as they had a very strong tendency to throw flags relatively late. This is not a big deal for the teams or game administration, but it meant that there were about five times where I wrote down missed penalties, then scratched it out because the officials threw the flag later than I would have. I charted one blown call benefiting Denver, and three questionable calls, two of which benefited Denver. One of the questionable calls was a Damarri Mathis pass defense that easily could have been pass interference. Mathis played only two defensive snaps, so I considered this highly concerning for Denver.
The spotting of the ball was consistently good (though this game did not have many important spots). The announcing from Referee Land Clark was fine. The officials called two tough fumbles on the field, and they were obviously correct calls with further review.
Mailbag
Feel free to ask questions in the comments or to send me an email. While I rarely make unsolicited comments on non-Broncos games, if you have any rules questions from other games I am happy to either reply in the comments or if the matter is of enough concern in next weeks column.