Mike Florio ,
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Thursday night’s Ravens-Dolphins game included a controversial tripping penalty that wiped out a huge Miami gain.
With the game still competitive (the Ravens led, 14-3, early in the second quarter) a 36-yard completion to receiver Jaylen Waddle that would have put the Dolphins at the Baltimore seven became a 15-yard penalty and, eventually, a punt.
Running back Ollie Gordon II slipped and fell. Ravens linebacker Mike Green tripped over Gordon. Prime Video rules analyst Terry McAulay immediately explained that it was “an incorrect call.”
Appearing Sunday on NFL Network, NFL rules analyst and club communication liaison Walt Anderson addressed the situation.
“What was called on the field was a low block that was a trip, using the leg to obstruct or block the opponent,” Anderson said. “And on this play, when Ollie, it almost looks like he slips and he goes down, there’s a flag on the ground by the umpire for tripping. What replay can do is they’re allowed to take a look, and if there was no contact with Ollie Gordon’s leg, then replay could have picked the flag up. But his upper right thigh did touch the leg of the defender, and that’s why replay could not pick this flag up.”
It’s all about where the trip happened on Gordon’s leg. Anderson later said that, if Green had tripped over Gordon’s hip, the replay process could have picked up the flag. Since it was the thigh, the ruling — albeit incorrect — stood.
The outcome is another example of the convoluted stew of bad calls that can, and can’t, be fixed by replay. And the outcome here is ridiculous. Gordon wasn’t tripping Green. Gordon slipped and fell, and Green tripped over him. The fact that replay could have fixed it only if Green had tripped higher on Gordon’s body shows how bizarre the current hair-splitting has become.
Over the past 20 years, the NFL has gradually embraced greater and greater ways to use video to fix the mistakes made by officials who are in the fray, trying to spot flashes and blurs in real time with the naked eye, all while trying not to be trampled by gladiators in helmets and full pads.
The fear of doing too much with replay has resulted in a failure to do enough. The sooner the NFL marries replay technology with common sense, the sooner the league will begin quieting the non-stop suspicion (thanks to legalized, normalized, and heavily monetized gambling) that “ normal incidents of the game ” are the result of abnormal motivations fueled by wagering.
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