They addressed the specific situation by making "too many men on the field" a dead ball foul if the players are on the field and the snap is imminent. In that case, it would be like an illegal motion penalty, or an off sides call (with an unobstructed path to the QB). This means that the play is whistled dead before it even begins, therefore, no time off the clock. That rule change had no effect on the play we are discussing.
You are right, Mike Florio just said the same thing that a safety would be the result of a holding penalty and the clock will not be reset. But a penalty against the Ravens can't end the game, so there probably would have been one untimed down on the free kick so basically nothing changed from what actually happened. And it isn't like the penalty will be assessed on the kickoff either, one might have assumed that the kickoff might be pushed back 10 yards. Crazy.
Ravens were on offense. Unless the rules have changed, it's only on defensive penalties that the game can not end.
Negative. Even if that foul is called, there is no guarantee they score before time runs out, and quite frankly they had some very fortunate luck to get that close. There are plenty of bad things the niners did that cost them the game. The refs were letting them play physically the whole game, so I understand the non call. It would be different if they were calling ticky tacky fouls the whole game.
The punter shanked one and had a horrible punt setting the Niners up near Baltimore's 30. On the next possession, Ray Rice fumbles setting up another drive from the 30. The defense stops them, and Akers blows the field goal, but gets bailed out by a running into the kicker penalty. The Niners were very fortunate during the few drives that happened immediately following that perfectly timed power outage. I don't feel that the game was as close as the scoreboard indicated. Ravens were dominating until the blackout, which completely killed their momentum.
well I had to look up the official NFL rule book and it does state that on an offensive foul the game is not over under two specific conditions, one of which is the (offense) kicking team committing the foul or if the offense commits an palpably unfair act (that is subjective though) but the kicking situation is pretty clear. You can go to NFL rule book and look under game timing.
gee...is that what you meant? I thought you meant the officials gift wrapping it to the 49ers... I guess we have different interpretation of what gift wrap means in the context of this thread... we were discussing officiating calls in general.. The situation you described were poor plays by the Ravens. I don't call it gift wrapping. The Akers kick is pretty standard call, you don't give the kicker a place to land, it is a foul. One can say lucky for Ravens, it wasn't the 15 yard variety which meant 1st down. I agree that Ravens were dominating first half, but 49ers have come back before so that wasn't surprising. I saw the opposite, that SF was coming on strong and you can say blackout helped, so the close score reflected a tale of two halves.
Positive. It wasn't a guarantee, but pretty close to one that they would get a TD. Four downs from that close to the goal line? So yes, that call cost them the game. Sometimes the game does come down to one play. On another note, who has a caption for this:
Bailed out? It should've been roughing the kicker, as the announcers stated. So they should've had a first down, rather than having to rekick a field goal. Rice fumbling is part of the game, not some magical luck the 49ers received. The 49ers fumbled as well. Was that bad luck? Same thing for Koch having a bad punt. Those plays were the Ravens performing poorly.
except they weren't. the Ravens were only up by five because they got a PI call on third and long that extended their last drive. take away that penalty and the 49ers only need a FG to take the lead, not a TD. clearly there was no instruction to be lenient, and they only let the Ravens hold because of the specific of that moment that they did not want to decide the end of the game with a penalty even though they were content to decide the game overall with a penalty on the previous possession.
JetBlue, you have to look at the context of the discussion. We were talking about calls at the very end of games. You know, kind of "last second" situations. The PI on Culliver was at the 8:35 mark of the 4th Quarter. That's well outside of "last second", or "end of the game", or "final 2 minutes", or anything even remotely similar.
I said it before, but they were lenient all game long. One DB/WR penalty all game long, on Culliver. They could have called what happened in the EZ multiple times all game long and didn't. The one time they called it, you saw the jersey separate for Smith's body as he got away from Culliver but Culliver still held. You saw the jersey pull. Other than that, they didn't call any DB/WR contact all game long. In my opinion if they called one there, they would have been changing how they called the game in the final two minutes, because it would have been much tighter than all game long. Boldin, Crabtree, Davis, etc were getting held and pushed most of the game. Happened to Smith on a long ball and he got his defender back on another long ball. If the game was called tight all game, multiple holding/PI/etc then I would agree about "asking the refs to be lenient, or calling the last few seconds differently", but they did it all game. You could say they were bad all game long, but consistently bad refs are much better than inconsistently bad refs
End of the Superbowl Has anyone noticed that when Ginn Jr. returned the Free Kick, he threw the ball in the air backwards before being tackled? The Ravens then ran on the field. This should have been a 15 yard penalty. He was at the 50 yard line. Akers should have had an opportunity at a 52 yard game tying kick.
LOL. I didn't say they weren't part of the game. They were screw ups on the part of the Ravens that gave great field position and opportunities to the other team. The power outage also completely changed momentum, and had it not happened, the game probably never gets close. My point was that the niners didn't get themselves back into the game, the Ravens handed it to them on a silver platter.
In the course of a game, any sports game for that matter, there are typical breaks here and there due to poor play from either team that benefits the other....that is usually how other team end up scoring.. so what is the point of highlighting one of two plays in the whole game? you got to be kidding??? Then I can say well the 49ers had poor play calling in the last offensive downs, so that they gift wrapped the game to Ravens, on and on... etc ..... What is the point of rehashing every play that end up benefiting one side or the other? I don't understand what you are getting at.
It looked like the ball went out of bounds or he was down to me. I didn't understand what SF was doing there. You have to try to set up the lateral play and all Ginn did was try to take it back. You put out your 11 best hands/speed guys (mostly CBs and WRs) and tell him to go to work. I was disappointed at the play to end the game
Have to believe that his point was that if you are down by 20+, it's a lot easier to come back when your opponent shanks a punt and also fumbles the ball away on their 23 yard line, as opposed to you having to mount a bunch of 80 yard drives to score.
huh? even if he was saying that, it still is completely irrelevant. I can pinpoint a number of plays too that would have backed the Ravens if this or that didn't happen so then Ravens would have to drive 80+ yards, like the PI on a questionable call that changed field positions completely, is that gift wrapping to Ravens??? the point is, you say one play, I say another play... and Kap was moving the ball quite well, I will then say 80 yards+ drive is doable. I mean it is just plain ridiculous to assume this or that... rehashing these plays that benefit one team over another is dumb and you can make one argument and I can make another....I think it is completely ludicrous to even tread on this path of arguments. He said gift wrapping to start with, this is not gift wrapping, refs bad calls are gift wrapping and even that I admit is subjective. You may disagree, but that is how I define gift wrapping.
And that doesn't affect what we were talking about. Your argument is they didn't "deserve" to win anyway, so why should they get the benefit of the doubt? SF outplaying the Ravens includes the plays where you say "the Ravens handed it to them on a silver platter." Obviously the Ravens didn't deserve to win if they gave the game away on a silver platter.
