What I Think Happened Last Sunday

The Packers' painful loss Sunday was only exacerbated by the final play, in which a facemask foul was clearly missed.

The whole world saw it. But the one person who could have, and might have at least called the Arizona Cardinals back from scoring on that play--perhaps at that point, merely delaying the inevitable (except we'll never know)--didn't.

Thing is, he probably couldn't have. Let me explain.

Before I begin: I officiated high school and small college football for 22 years. My high school crew position was that of the referee--the one who not only announces the calls on fouls and enforcement, but covers the plays on the line of scrimmage, behind it. That's his territory. It isn't necessarily exclusive, but for the plays I'm about to discuss, it is.

That means--the passer. That means--knowing when a pass has officially been made. That means--calling fouls on the defense for roughing the passer (which also was missed, in my view, but I'll get to that one, too). That means--calling whether or not a pass was forward or backward. That means, or it could mean--knowing when or whether fumbles take place behind the line of scrimmage.

Some big calls, right? Absolutely. Games are won or lost depending on those judgements.

And at least one call was missed. Another, maybe, depending upon how he saw it.

Two plays before the final play, Aaron Rodgers was hit particularly hard after he threw a pass. The Arizona defender pretty much launched himself at Rodgers, contacting him with his helmet and hitting Rodgers on the bottom of his own helmet. But it's not exactly where he hit him. Not exactly. It's when.

The NFL has made it a point of penalizing helmet-to-helmet contact this season, when it was clear that that was the point. And from what I saw Sunday, it was, because of the way the Arizona player wished to contact Rodgers. He didn't merely try to run into him and throw him down; that in fact would have been roughing the passer because it would have taken him that extra second of commitment to having made contact after the pass left Rodgers' hand.

The official in question has a guideline that those officials in that position have pretty much agreed upon to determine when hitting the quarterback is hitting him too late, and that's why the official--the referee--has to have the correct position to watch the play: behind the quarterback, and to his throwing-arm side.

That's because when he knows for certain that the ball has left, that the pass has been made and it's forward, he says to himself: "The ball is gone," or "It's gone." After that extra second or so, if a defender hits the quarterback on his own accord (not blocked into him, and it doesn't matter if he simply lost his balance; you can't determine intent), it's roughing--no questions asked. The flag goes down. (There must be a tighter time span, too, having watched enough pro games this year to see something of a trend.) Inside of that second, all bets are off because the defender has to have some benefit of the doubt.

The Arizona defender hit Rodgers too soon for that statement to be made, I believe, so roughing on its own couldn't be called. I think the helmet-to-helmet contact should have been, though, because of the way the defender launched himself at Rodgers. So that call--unnecessary roughtness--first of all, was missed, and the Packers would have had an automatic first down at or around their own 35.

BUT--the angle at which the contact was made might have been precisely the angle from which the referee couldn't have seen the helmet-to-helmet contact, because he's standing behind the quarterback on his throwing-arm side. He's looking through Rodgers, and might not have been able to see that exact contact.

(Never mind that Rodgers missed a chance to hit Greg Jennings for what looked like a touchdown on the first play of this series; everything else would have been irrelevant. That must be said here.)

But that leads us to the final play in question. So there's the referee, standing on Rodgers' right side and behind him (see above) when Arizona #27 blitzes and grabs Rodgers' right arm. The ball comes loose.

He also grabbed Rodgers' facemask almost simultaneously. But the referee isn't watching that anymore. In that split-second, he could tell that the ball was loose. He had a more important decision to make.

And that decision was: Who has the ball? And with that decision, he has to find the ball first. Failure to do that is death to an official. Nobody, and I mean nobody, wants to be accused of blowing an inadvertant whistle, killing a play that has every right to continue on. When all plays look like they're finished, the watchword for every official, before he blows the whistle, is: Find the ball, and don't do a damn thing until you do. It's sacrosanct. It's chiseled into their heads.

At the angle at which the referee was watching, he couldn't immediately tell. But his eyes were focused on the Arizona defenders between whom the ball was clearly now being bobbled.

What he could no longer do was watch Rodgers, who was now getting his facemask tugged pretty decisively, and in those first few split-seconds, his helmet was turned away from him. The rest of the world saw it, including just about everybody in the stands. The referee couldn't possibly see that, and determine the possession of the ball, at the same time, even though the two events weren't five yards from each other.

What were the other officials doing? The closest one to the referee, the umpire, was in all likelihood watching for holding and other lineman-to-lineman fouls (like hands to the face, ironically). But he's not responsible for making the call on the quarterback. Had he seen it, he might have. But he can't be faulted for missing that one, either, obvious though it might have been. He has to back up the issue of the loose ball as well, and consult with the referee if the referee has a question.

That's why the blue beanbags come out immediately upon a loose ball issue. Once possession has been determined to have been changed, enforcement of subsequent fouls needs to be determined, as close as can be done so at that moment (imprecise, but as long as it's in the general area, nobody gets too excited).

The other officials are downfield, covering pre-determined territories (with individual and overlapping responsibilities) and calling fouls possibly before the ball's even thrown, such as the illegal contact or defensive holding or pass interference on the offense (which, once the ball's been thrown, can be called because it's now clear that the receiver isn't blocking for a runner).

They won't be throwing a flag on Arizona #27, either. No way on that one. They might have viewed the play, but they certainly didn't see the whole play, and an official who throws flags or blows plays dead and didn't see the whole play is asking for trouble, big-time.

So. The referee was too consumed with trying to figure out--in the real time of, maybe, a second and a half--who had the ball, and whether the ball had hit the ground (because if it did, he would have had to determine whether or not Rodgers had in fact made a bona fide forward pass or not, or whether the "tuck rule" would have been in effect, in which case it was still a fumble and a loose ball, so he would have determined whether or not to blow the play dead or let it ride).

In that second-and-a-half, Rodgers' helmet was turned back toward the referee, and #27 still had a hold of it. But the referee's eyes are not there at all anymore. They're trying to find the ball, and determine its status. Everything now rides on that call.

All of which came down to the golden rule of officiating: You call what you see. Beyond that: You don't call what you don't see, and you don't see what isn't in your territory. Any official who does that risks a kind of anarchy about who makes calls and who doesn't--and the stability of how a game is called is part of how everybody understands it. Besides, once he does that to somebody else, he risks having it done to him.

There's a certain dignity to that that officials don't like to risk with each other, because crews work together in ways that most people don't know about, and there's a certain brotherhood involved in which embarrassing a colleague isn't advisable. You can risk not getting calls to work future games in a big hurry.

Anyhow: Those things were all at work in those few seconds on Sunday. Sometimes, it's just too bad. And this was one of those "sometimes".