It was one of many largest performs of Tremendous Bowl LVI, and put the Cincinnati Bengals in place to upset the Los Angeles Rams at SoFi Stadium on Sunday. On the primary play to begin the second half, Joe Burrow dropped again and located broad receiver Tee Higgins for an explosive 75-yard landing that gave the Bengals a 17-13 lead after a profitable PAT by kicker Evan McPherson. Higgins strolled into the tip zone with nobody inside a rustic mile of him, and the replay confirmed why.
Higgins grabbed the facemask of All-Professional cornerback Jalen Ramsey and turned it away from the ball, the momentum of the transfer resulting in Ramsey falling ahead and out of the play. From there, it was a straightforward grab-and-run for Higgins to offer the Bengals the lead — no flag having been thrown for intentional facemask.
Merely put, the officiating crew did not consider it impacted the result of the play.
“Our rule is that if there’s a seize and twist and switch, there’s sufficient for a foul,” NFL official Robert Torbert informed PFWA pool reporter Joe Reedy, including the officers noticed no twist-and-turn of Ramsey’s helmet. “If there’s only a rake throughout the facemask, the place there’s not a twist and switch even when there is a seize, there isn’t any foul. The officers didn’t see any contact that rose to the extent of a foul for a 15-yard facemask.”
You be the choose.
The Rams had been in a position to overcome Higgins’ landing to win the second Tremendous Bowl in franchise historical past with a late-game drive by Matthew Stafford that was punctuated by a landing seize from eventual Tremendous Bowl MVP Cooper Kupp. It wasn’t the one controversial name/no-call of the sport, with a possible holding penalty going uncalled towards Ramsey earlier within the recreation that led to a Bengals subject objective as a substitute of a doable landing for Cincinnati.
In the long run, it wasn’t the worst outing by NFL officers this season, however it was additionally removed from pristine.
There was additionally the competition of flags on the Rams’ ultimate scoring drive that was a mixture of the justifiable and the not-so-much, threatening to make the ultimate recreation of the 2021 season an enduring reminder of simply how controversial the officers have been over the previous a number of months. With the Rams taking dwelling the Lombardi trophy, the non-call towards Higgins avoids happening in historical past as one of the crucial egregious within the Tremendous Bowl period, but when they nonetheless needed a proof, they now have one.
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