The Detroit Lions seem incapable of avoiding drama when it comes to their losses, and that was certainly the case in their 29-24 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday evening.
After the Steelers scored a touchdown to go up 29-17 with just 6:36 left, Detroit mounted a furious comeback. They scored in about two minutes to bring it to 29-24, and they eventually got a defensive stop, which ended with a missed chip-shot field goal. They had 2:05 left and a timeout remaining to go 73 yards for the win.
Aided by a couple of big penalties on the Steelers, the Lions eventually worked their way into a first-and-goal at the 1-yard line with 25 seconds left. A win almost seemed certain at that point. Instead, the Lions committed three penalties from there: a pair of offensive pass interference penalties and a false start. The second pass interference came on one of the wackiest plays of the year: On fourth-and-goal from the 9-yard line, Jared Goff found Amon-Ra St. Brown, who was a yard short of the goal line. After his forward progress had been stalled, St. Brown made a last-ditch effort to lateral the ball to Goff, who grabbed it and took it in for a touchdown. But the offensive pass interference took the touchdown off the board, ending the game with time expired.
Here’s a look at what Lions players had to say about the wild finish.
On the St. Brown lateral:
Goff:
“It caught me by surprise a little bit, for sure. Loose ball, put it in the endzone. Tried to make a play with it, and unfortunately, it didn’t matter.”
Dan Campbell:
It was a headsy play, man. He wasn’t down, and just to stay alive for the last play, man. That’s what Saint is, he’s a freaking smart, instinctive player. Gave us one more shot, we thought, but it didn’t work out.”
On the two pass interference calls
Goff:
“Those guys have a hard job. I don’t want to make any excuses or anything like that. We’ve been on the right side of a lot of these. We’ve been on the wrong side of a lot of these. I think a few plays prior, the one on (Isaac) TeSlaa was a little bit more – in my head, for interpretation. But listen, man, they’ve got to make the calls, and I promise you if I were sitting on the other side of that right now, we’d be saying great job. Those sting for sure, and you wish they weren’t called. So be it.”
Goff later straight-up said the pass interference call on Isaac TeSlaa was wrong.
“In my opinion, that’s a bad call. Those happen. Listen, man, they’ve got a tough job, and they make calls that go our way all the time. That one in particular, he [TeSlaa] should not hang his head about.
St. Brown: (via Detroit Football Network)
“Look, we had—I think we had a P.I. on them, you know? I think we got a call, they got a call. If we don’t get that P.I. on Jamo (Jameson Williams), the drive’s over. So, some might say that, at the end of the day, the refs have a job to do, and they’re trying their best to do it. And we have a job to do out there as players, to go make plays. We just didn’t. We didn’t make enough plays today.”
Campbell:
“I don’t even want to get into it. Because it’s not going to change anything, we still lost. It’s–I mean look, you think you score, you don’t score, and then you think you’re going to have another play. Replay it or back it up, one more shot. And it doesn’t. And that’s just, I guess that’s the way it’s written in the rulebook. So that’s frustrating. But there again, it should never come to that. We had our opportunities. We weren’t able to put it in before that play.”
Referee Carl Cheffers offered the following pool report after the game to Detroit News reporter Nolan Bianchi. Here’s the full transcript of that conversation.
Question: What was the action that led to an offensive pass interference call on Amon-Ra St. Brown on the final play of the game?
Carl Cheffers: The official who called the foul said that the receiver created separation that gave him an advantage in catching the pass. So, he called pass interference.
Question: There was a pretty long discussion on the field between officials before the final call was announced. What were the officials discussing on the field after the last play?
Cheffers: It is a pretty complex play. We had the original player who had the ball, lose possession of the ball. So, we had to decide if that was a fumble or a backwards pass because of course we have restrictions on the recovery of a fumble inside of two minutes. We ruled that it was a backward pass, so the recovering player was able to advance it and that recovering player advanced it for a touchdown. We had to rule on that and then because of the offensive pass interference, it negates the touchdown. Because it is an offensive foul, we do not extend the half. Therefore, there is no score and there is no replay of the down. That’s the way the rule is written.
Question: A few plays earlier, there was an offensive pass interference penalty on Isaac TeSlaa that nullified a touchdown catch. What was the specific infraction that warranted throwing the flag?
Cheffers: The reporting official on that play told me that the offending player picked one of the defenders, creating an opportunity for the offensive player to make the catch.
Question: Was it deemed that he was beyond a yard of the line of scrimmage, more than one yard past the line of scrimmage?
Cheffers: Well, it has to be beyond a yard or it would not be a foul. The ruling on the field was that the action occurred beyond a yard.
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