Breaking down the officiating from the week 12 AFC West rivalry game between the Denver Broncos and the Las Vegas Raiders
In the Denver Broncos 29-19 win over the Las Vegas Raiders, there were 10 accepted penalties and two reviews. Despite the officials having one review overturned, this game showed consistent officiating philosophy and good judgment.
Patrick Surtain
The announcers highlighted two plays by Patrick Surtain that they felt should have or could have been penalized. The first was a potential personal foul to a defenseless player when in the second half he hit a shoulder to shoulder hit high and hard on a receiver attempting a pass. I would have fouled this play, but it was questionable, and the choice not to was consistent with their reticence to throw flags last week. The other play the announcers were clearly wrong. This was a pass breakup late in the fourth quarter where they thought he committed pass interference defending Brock Bowers. I disagree with them. I believe that the announcers are seeing that he made a lot of contact with the receiver and that the contact comes before the pass. Both of these things are true.
However, neither of those on their own qualifies as pass interference. In the context of this play, where Surtain clearly played the ball (successfully – he was credited with a pass defensed), to earn pass interference he needs to also separately prevent Bowers from making a play on the ball. He does not pin Bowers arms, and any contact does not obviously alter Bowers frame. Bowers still is in a football position and really attempting to catch the ball when Surtain defenses the pass. This was great play.
As a bit of an aside, I really wish they would have their rules analyst come in on more plays like this – because there are interesting takes to be had. They had Steratore come in twice, and both times he was there to explain his take on spotting the ball – a task that had no particular rules complexity and is just raw judgment and angles.
Officials Determined to Not Call Penalties
Ron Tolbert and his officiating crew were determined to not call fouls in questionable circumstances. The result was that they chose to not call fouls in multiple circumstances where I would have. They did not call unnecessary roughness on three plays where I would have (two benefited Denver, one Vegas). They did not call ineligible downfield on three plays I would have (two benefited Vegas, one Denver). They did not call Gardiner Minshew for intentional grounding, when he very definitely threw the ball into the ground because if he had thrown it near the receiver it probably would have been intercepted. There is an unwritten rule in the NFL that grounding is not called for passes when they are obviously short of the “receiver in the area” but I would have still called this one. They tried very hard to not be involved in determining the outcome of the game.
The Broncos Offense Has a Problem
Bo Nix is having trouble getting plays called so that the Broncos can get lined up appropriately. At least, I assume it is a Nix problem, and not a Payton problem, because Payton did not have these occurrences happen regularly throughout his career. But Denver burned all three second half timeouts to avoid delay of game penalties, and have had many other plays going down to the wire over the past few weeks. Simply put, the Broncos are not getting ready for action fast enough. The last of the timeouts came on a play where Denver did not get set (excluding two offensive linemen who could not get set because of the umpire) until the play clock was down to three seconds. Even if the officials had allowed Denver to snap the ball immediately (and they should have, there was no basis for the delay), Denver had at best 3 seconds to finalize blocking and snap the ball.
The officials costing possibly two seconds should not distract us from the reality that Denver burned through a full play clock without getting ready to play. I am placing this on Nix, but it could be a Payton problem or something else, but it keeps coming back and it is definitely concerning.
Official Evaluation
I loved the officiating this game. With a division rivalry, a determination to let borderline cases go can spiral out of control fast. It did not this game. As detailed above the officials were very consistent with not throwing flags. They had several great calls that I thought were bad in real time but replay showed my instinct was wrong (both Sutton touchdowns I thought only had one foot in, I thought the strip sack the ball was moving forward). The spotting of the ball was a master clinic in precision. The booth challenged their spot of the ball short of the goal line on the third to last play of the game, but replay showed that field judge Ryan Dickson had it perfect placed. That one play was obvious, but they were consistent throughout the game. Even though a challenge earlier overturned their spot, the challenge was really about if a ball carrier had been down by contact, and the officials chose to let it play out instead of thinking they were sure they knew the answer (a choice that is generally quite defensible). I charted a few mistakes by different officials, but the only one not mentioned above was a missed holding by Michael Mayer on Cody Barton. That is a good day for Ron Torbert and his entire crew.
Feel free to ask questions in the comments or to send me an email. While I rarely make unsolicited comments on non-Broncos games, if you have any rules questions from other games I am happy to either reply in the comments or if the matter is of enough concern in next weeks column.