The Los Angeles Rams suffered a devastating loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Thursday Night Football in Week 16 as they blew a 16-point lead in the fourth quarter and fell in overtime.
The reason the Seahawks were able to come back was because they had three successful two-point conversions, including the game-winner in overtime.
One of those two-point conversions did not come without controversy, however. Trailing by eight in the fourth quarter, the Seahawks scored a touchdown and lined up for two to tie it. Sam Darnold threw what appeared to be an incomplete pass that was tipped by Jared Verse.
The play appeared to be over as the Seahawks sent their kicking team onto the field and the Rams their kick return team. The officials then announced that they would be reviewing the play, however, and they eventually overturned the call to make it a tie game.
The ruling was that Darnold’s pass went backwards and therefore was a fumble. Even though the referees blew the whistle and the play appeared to be dead, Seahawks running back Zach Charbonnet picked up the ball in the end zone for the two points.
After the loss, Rams head coach Sean McVay admitted he had never seen anything like that, although he is not using it as an excuse for the loss.
“I’ve never quite seen anything like what happened on the two-point conversion, where you’re lined up to kick off, then they say it’s a fumble because they had the clear and obvious recovery,” McVay said. “Now you tack it on, you make it a 30-30 game. Very interesting. Didn’t get a clear explanation of everything that went on, just because of some of the timing of it. They were trying to be able to do that, but that’s the thing that I’ve said, I’ve never seen anything or never been a part of anything like that, and I’ve grown up around this game.
“I’m not making excuses, we don’t do that, I don’t believe in that. It doesn’t move us forward. But we do want clarity and an understanding of, you know, the things that we can do to minimize that when we rejected the two-point conversion.”
Similar to his head coach, Matthew Stafford did not get an explanation and would like some clarity on the rule.
“I just want to know that rule because I thought on plays like that – two-point plays, inside of 2 minutes and stuff – I didn’t think you were allowed to advance a fumble,” Stafford said. “Otherwise, I think everybody would, if you’re going down, just fumble it forward and let somebody else advance it. I obviously don’t know the rule well enough.”
After getting 24 hours to sit on it, McVay received some more clarification, although he still think the rule needs to be changed.
“When you’re able to review a two-point play, you split hairs on, alright, is it a forward pass? Is it a backwards pass? When you reject it, they casually pick it up, which you always do that,” McVay said on Friday. “The whistle is already blown dead, mind you. Then they wait [a minute and fifty seconds] in real time to then go back and say, ‘We’re going to review this.’ Then it ends up getting called a two-point play. By rule, because it was considered a backwards pass and not a fumble, they were able to advance that. I do not believe that anybody would be in disagreement that those are not the plays we want in our game. That was not their intent. They were trying to throw a lateral screen. It got batted down and it was not a successful conversion but by letter of the law, it was. Those will be things that we’ll discuss. I do know this, those aren’t the kind of plays that you want to have people converting on. That’s not something that I can imagine anyone would argue with me on that. I would feel the same way if it benefited us, too.”
Being able to pick up a ball and it being considered a recovery after a whistle is blown is a dangerous precedent as moving forward, defensive players will now be on high alert and ready to hit offensive players if they believe a play is not dead.
It will be interesting to see if that rule gets addressed in the offseason, but regardless, the Rams had plenty of opportunities to win that game and were unable to do so. Now, they no longer control their destiny for the NFC West and the No. 1 seed and likely will be on the road to begin the postseason.
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