Another Silly Stoopid Blown Call

Well the Eagles lost a tough one, 36-31 at home to the Giants on Sunday night on national television. But the real losers in the game were not the Eagles, but once again the referees, as well as one of the two key announcers on the Sunday night games. With the Eagles up 24-20 with 6 minutes to go in the 3rd quarter, Giants quarterback and reigning Superbowl MVP Eli Manning scrambled during a 3rd and 10 play further than he planned to before short-arming a first-down pass to inside the 5-yard line, but then he was called for being past the line of scrimmage when he threw the ball.

Here is the way NFL.com describes the play in question in their writeup of the game:

The Giants went ahead 27-24 two plays after a reversed call gave them a first down at the Eagles' 3. Manning's 17-yard pass to Kevin Boss on third-and-10 was initially ruled illegal because he appeared to release the ball from beyond the line of scrimmage. Replays showed Manning's back foot was behind the line, and Jacobs ran in from the 3 for the go-ahead score.

"I think the way the rule is written, it was worth taking a shot at it," said Manning, who urged Coughlin to challenge the call. "If you have one toe on the line of scrimmage, then it's a legal pass. I thought it was worth the risk."

The Eagles were surprised the play was overturned.

"I don't know what they were looking at," defensive tackle Mike Patterson said.

Here's the video. The offending play is at 2:38 of that video and you can see it for yourself, but there's just one problem: that is the edited-after-the-fact version of the video, where the NFL or NBC (not sure which, who really cares) had re-drawn the red line into the video, moving it back some number of inches such that Manning's back foot can be seen still on the red line when the ball left his hand.

Watching the game in real time as I assume many of you out there did since it was the nationally televised Sunday night game and featured two of the better teams in the NFL in a divisional battle in far and away the best division that football has to offer, it was downright comical, reminding me sadly qutie a bit of watching Joe Fuck and Tim ShitCarver calling the World Series, as I would constantly find myself wondering what the hell game those two baseball clowns could possibly be watching given the drivel coming out of their mouths through the speakers on my tv set. On Sunday night, at least three separate times, Al Michaels, normally just about the best sports announcer on tv as far as I'm concerned, played the replay of Manning's throw, each time freezing the frame with Manning's heel just barely touching a millimeter of the red line and the ball still in Manning's hand. Michaels would then say something like "And here is the ball, out of Eli Manning's hand, and you can see Manning's heel is still just ever so barely touching the red line."

Thankfully, co-host John Madden was having none of it. All three times Michaels tried to pull the wool over the viewers' eyes, Madden chimed in with "Well there's just one problem, Al. The ball is still in Manning's hands in that shot, and his heel is only barely on the line while he's still holding the ball." Three times Michaels showed the same view, commenting on how it proved the refs had made the correct call in overturning the on-the-field call of a penalty on Manning, a loss of down, and requiring the Giants to go for a roughly 41-yard field goal instead of the touchdown they easily scored a few players later after having 1st and Goal from the 3 yard line handed to them. And three times John Madden laughed at Michaels, explaining quite correctly how it is impossible to imagine the referees using that video as the "clear evidence" they need in order to overturn the call on the field in that spot.

The kicker came when the game came back from a commercial break following Brandon Jacobs' eventual touchdown despite triyng to fumble the ball to the Eagles for the fourth time on the night. Just after the break and before the kickoff, there was Michaels again, this time showing the same exact replay, only now you could more or less clearly see that Manning released the ball while not just his heel but the majority of his entire foot was in fact clearly touching the red line indicating the line of scrimmage. I'm looking at this and I'm like "WTF I just watched this replay, ran it back on my dvr four or five times, and this is not the same replay I've been looking at for the past five minutes?!" When John Madden weighs in with the exact same sentiment, this is when Michaels decides to fill in the viewers that actually, during the break NBC had reviewed the placement of the red line on the video, and had changed where they drew in the red line to indicate where the line of scrimmage "really" was.

To which John Madden, bless his bug dumb oafy heart, responds, "Oh well there's just one problem with this. This is the edited version where the red line has been changed to make the call look right. I wanna see the actual red line again!" or something to that effect.

Dumb F-bags. Don't waste your time trying to curry favor from the sport you are calling the games for by trying to obfuscate matters to make the refs look like they didn't blow a call that clearly had a significant impact on the outcome of a huge game between divisional rivials. If you can't think of anything non-idiotic to say, then how about you just shut your piehole and let the viewers see the replay for ourselves and make our own judgments. Don't put up a video that clearly shows the call could not concievably have been overturned, and claim that is clearly shows it should have been overturned. Don't say the ball was out of Eli Manning's hands, when clearly it is still in his hands in the video you're putting up. And please, most of all, do us all the service of not even bothering to show the edited version of the play after the fact, which NBC and the NFL both clearly have an interest in making the refs appear to have made the right call.

Bottom line: you need clear and convincing evidence to overturn a call in the NFL via instant replay, and there was no way no how that such overwhelming evidence existed in this case. You blew the call, you affected the outcome of the game, and it's only the 50 billionth time that has happened in the last few seasons, even with the help of instant replay to help make sure you blindass not-even-knowing-the-rules monkeys can get the shit right. But hey, the New York team won the game with the help of that bullshit, so everything's gonna be alright. Effing unreal.