Bill Michaels was saying after the game that this was a terribly officiated game. I missed almost the entire first quarter and I was seated all the way across a very large restaurant from the TV, with the volume turned most of the way down, so I wasn't able to follow more than the grossest details of the action. However, if any of you noticed some particularly egregious instances of poor officiating, I'd love to see them brought up in this thread.

I want to focus instead on two situations that occurred in this game, both of which were so rare that they resulted in seemingly head-scratching officiating decisions.

1. On the two-point conversion penalty, it was announced at the stadium by the referee that the Eagles had incurred a 10-yard penalty, which would have backed the ball to the 12-yard line for the retry. In fact, however, the officials placed the ball on the 7. In the case, the announcement was wrong and the ball was placed correctly, as the penalty for illegal touching of a forward pass, which is what was called here, is 5 yards. After the officials realized their mistake, though, the referee should have corrected the erroneous announcement of a 10-yard penalty.

2. Charging the Eagles with an injury timeout after they had already expended their third timeout was not only irregular, it was downright bizarre. It's impossible to charge a team with a timeout when they have none left. Some of the people in the chat room were screaming for the officials to enforce a 10-second runoff to compensate for the fact that the Eagles were out of timeouts. Interestingly, however, this phantom 4th timeout appears nowhere in the play-by-play account of the game on NFL.com; in fact, there's no mention of the injury at all. Therefore, I'm not sure how much time was on the clock when the injury occurred. Considering the fact that 10-second runoffs only occur inside the last 1:30 of a half, and I think the injury occurred just outside the 90-second mark, I believe the officials were justified in not running 10-seconds off the clock.

It seems to me that in this unusual situation, the only way to have abided by the spirit of the rule would have been to award the Packers an additional timeout. Unfortunately, there's no provision in the rulebook for something like that.

On the other hand, while I do understand the reason for the rule, I definitely don't like the rule, so I must admit that I was honestly not too heartbroken with the approach the officials took, even though it could have come back to haunt my team. Perhaps this game will force the Competition Committee to reexamine this rule in the offseason.

On balance, I believe that even though the officials' decisions raised protests of disbelief, they got both of the calls correct.

I'll get to the thought experiment tomorrow.

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I was yelling at my TV when they were awarded a 4th timeout too. Honestly. That's stupid, and if the Eagles won the game, I would've blamed that.

As for the 2PC thing, I was wondering why we went straight to commercial. Every accepted penalty, even after a 1PC or 2PC, means you have to do the play all over again. People in the chat were bitching about why they get a retry, though it was a moot point cuz we killed Vick anyway.

I didn't hear anything about a 10-yard penalty on that though.

As for the rest of the game, there were some blatant holds that even viewers saw. Most of them were against Philly on Clay Matthews, but we should've been called when James Jones was holding during the Jackson screen for a TD (but I'm not complaining).

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There was 1:06 left on the clock when Celek got hurt.

I too was wondering why there was no run-off. The rule is there to prevent a team/player from faking an injury to stop the clock. Seems that this was the exact incident the rule was there for.

Good thing Mike Pirera (?) was at the game so Fox could consult with him on it. Oh wait...

Kareem Copeland from PackersNews said since the pass was incomplete, the clock had to be stopped anyway.

If the ball was still in play, the clock would've stayed live.

Does it explain why they took 3 minutes to get reset? No, but it at least kind of makes sense.

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Good point. I didn't even think of that. It was so obvious.

The officials made the right call in both cases. They just got confused and did a poor job of explaining themselves. The penalty on the two-point conversion was a rare one, so it took them awhile to figure it out. (Anybody who already knew that rule, please raise your hand--be honest.) And as blueleopard pointed out (via Kareem Copeland), that play near the end was an incomplete pass which stopped the clock, so the whole question of timeouts and the ten second runoff was irrelevant.

There were not a lot of penalties called in the game, and I like that. I wouldn't doubt that some linemen got away with holds. I didn't see any, but I never watch for that. In general, it did not strike me as a poorly officiated game.

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It seems to me Raji and Clay were being held most of the game, but what else is new?

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The Jarrett Bush pass defense on the Eagles touchdown after the Rodgers fumble.

The James Jones drop.

Underwood's screw up.

The prevent defense.


There are much more relevant things to discuss than officiating.

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First the Celek call was correct and prudent in the situation.. the pass was incomplete stopping the clock. Therefore it became a dead ball officials timeout for injury resulting in no run off... legitimate injury no issue at all.

Greg nailed the 2 pointer.

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Yep, it was 1:06 and the run off occurs within the final 60 seconds of the half, at least that's what I the announcers have been saying all year.


Edit,

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