Tuesday, December 4th, 2007...9:48 am

Patriots Steal a Game

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What an amazing game last night! I still haven’t caught my breath. There are a few things to talk about on this one, but let’s start with what is on everyone’s mind.

The Officiating

To put it mildly, the Ravens are not too happy with the officiating crew from last night. Let’s look at the calls in questions:

  • The Timeout - ESPN said that assistants can’t call timeouts, so officially the referee shouldn’t have allowed it. That said, they’ve been allowing assistant call timeouts all year. If Tom Brady is successful and the ref didn’t allow the timeout, you’d still have a lot of upset Ravens. Bart Scott on the timeout: “I didn’t hear a timeout. That was very convenient.” Television replays clearly showed a different story. Samari Rolle eventually said it wasn’t an officiating issue, “The coaches called timeout, so that’s out of our hands.” So it was an unfortunate coaching decision for the Ravens, but at least one Raven was pinning this unfairly on the officials.
  • The Holding Call - I thought it looked like holding. ESPN analysts said it looked like holding (though Steve Young said that it might have been one the officials usually let slide). Len Pasquarelli said, Scott had Gaffney in a bear hug.. I haven’t read any national analyst who thinks that it wasn’t holding.
  • The Touchdown Catch - I think this is one that Raven should be most mad about. Was Gaffney juggling the ball when he put his feet in bounds? I don’t think so. If this goes against the Patriots, I’m livid. However, I can understand the officials on this one. Replays seemed to show a borderline catch. During the game, an ESPN announcer said it was a catch. I have to think that the ruling was that it wasn’t enough to overturn the call on the field. When I think about this more, the two unsportsmanlike conduct calls would have given the Patriots the ball the two yard line (half the distance twice) even if the touchdown is overturned. It’s still not 6 points, but it’s pretty close.
  • The Rest - What other calls are the Ravens complaining about? Are they upset about the false start on the Patriots on 4th and 1? That was a call against the Patriots. In hindsight it happened to help them, but like the timeout, when the whistle is blown you don’t know what the results of the play. It seems to me that the Ravens are more frustrated about the fact the Patriots got three chances on a fourth down play - but there wasn’t a bad call involved. You add the 4th down holding call I can see why the Ravens were shaking their heads thinking, “we stopped them three times on fourth down.”
  • Final Thoughts - A few Raven players have said that the league wants the Patriots to go undefeated. This is a very curious conclusion after many talked about the bad calls against the Patriots during the Patriots - Colts game just a couple of weeks ago…. The Patriots also had a few things to say about the referees as well….. Peter King agrees with me about the officiating adding that the Raven benefited from the non-call on the last play of the game…. I can’t find the exact quote on the web, but I think I remember Ray Lewis blame the referees for taking the win away from Sean Taylor, who they were playing for. I really hope I didn’t hear that and that he didn’t say it. The two events are unrelated. Taylor never played on Baltimore. I understand that they are friends, but the Patriots’ have a lot of former Miami players (Wilfork comes to mind) of their own. I think it’s a poor form to use of a great tragedy to sling an arrow against the referees.

    • The Rest of the Game

    The Patriots got outplayed in this one - badly. Rodney Harrison mentioned that they got “bullied” and that felt like an understatement. They lost battles on the offensive line and the defensive line. McGahee ran wherever he wanted to, whenever he wanted to. Clearly what some have said is the best front seven didn’t show up last night. I realize that Moss did have a TD, but it was his worst game statistically. Welker didn’t show up either. The running game was average (the RBs made their impact receiving). The Patriots made Kyle Boller look like a top tier QB, with the exception of him throwing a ball to a pile of Patriots players.

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