I was thinking the same thing..........there were no receivers in the area at all. Maybe on the screen play there was, hard to tell but not on the deep one.
if there is no rush, theres no grounding call. Lets say the WR runs a complete wrong route...a short in when he was supposed to run a fly...QB chucks it down the field and thers no one around. Its not grounding with no rush. Spiking the ball would also be grounding if the rush being present wasnt a factor. I dont remember the second play but the deep one definitely was NOT grounding because of the lack of any rush whatsoever
See, the screen play looked like it was meant to go to Crumpler (from memory), but Crumpler was still holding his block at the LOS. Collins dumped the ball off about 5 yds right in the middle of the field while Crumpler was off to (Collins') left still blocking. I'm with you on the 1st one. No receivers whatsoever nearby. That one occurred during that TD drive.
This makes sense Escarole King. I'll re-watch that play and see just how close we came to getting him. I remember seeing the pocket collapse around him, but not sure if he was scrambling. Does scrambling have to be taken into consideration as well?
It didn't seem to me like the officiating was unbalanced one way or the other. Yeah, there were a few missed calls like the facemask but I didn't see anything gamechanging. If anything, I think that we've gotten away with a few close non-calls that could have gone against us as Pass Interference. Smith had one yesterday and Lowery on the last play against the Pats. I'm not saying that it was clearly PI, just saying that they were close calls that happened to go our way.
There was no white jersey anywhere near the ball over the middle that I could see. It was claimed in the bar I was in that due to the fact that there needed to be touching of the QB before grounding was called. I don't know how true that is. There was a bit of an argument but in the end you play the game as called. (ref. Denver vs SD game 1 last year).
Ha! That was the shittiest call ever. I guess I shouldn't expect so much from the refs, and fortunately we ended up winning that game anyway. But my interest has peaked in finding out the scenario for an intentional grounding call.
These plays actually didn't bother me too much, because I think Sanchez got away with one, too. What really bothered me about the Refs was the whole 'Timekeepers forgot to re-set the play clock' deal. They blew the play dead after the Jets got their defense set, then when they took official time to re-set the play clock, the Jets got their defense set and they blew it dead again for the exact same reason. They gave the Titans 2 separate plays to get a look at what the defense was doing and on the ensuing play it was a first down. That pissed me off a lot, and the announcers didn't say a goddamn thing about it. I believe that drive resulted in a TD.
Yes, intentional grounding is only called if the QB throws the ball away inside the pocket to avoid a sack, but spiking the ball does not count as intentional grounding as it is not called if the qb throws the ball away immediatly after the snap. I too remember the first play you described and thought it should've been grounding, but I guess the refs just missed that one. The one call that bugged me was the Faneca non-holding call on the play where TJ had his only good run of the game. That one would've sealed the game.
Yeah, that drove me crazy too. The game was kind of messy for both teams and the refs. We were lucky to get some turnovers.
