Brad Allen For the Win!
Last night’s officiating was SPOT ON. 9 total penalties (7 on Baltimore), but they let the players play, didn’t call frivolous penalties, called them even on both sides of the ball (a hold on the Ravens was a hold on the Browns) and there were absolutely no controversial calls or non-calls to speak of…
Well… unless you ask literally every Browns fan.
Brought to our attention by SB Nation, there’s a few variations of a screen shot floating around that appear to show Will Hill stepping out of bounds on his Kick-Six return.
Looks legit… but there’s this thing called depth perception that leads me to believe this screen grab is only showing one angle in order to help those Browns fans cope with their loss to a Ravens team without their starting QB, lead running back, #1 wideout, best defensive player, and a whole bunch of role players to boot.
Using the position of the Cleveland player in the screen grab, kicker Billy Cundiff Travis Coons, we can identify the exact moment this image was taken, then take the aerial screen grab at the same exact moment.
And here’s what we see.
And if there was any question about his feet for the duration of the return, here’s every step of that glorious return from the same aerial view.
Of course there’s a question as well about whether or not Anthony Levine Sr. was lined up in the neutral zone prior to the snap, with this image floating around the internet.
There’s a whole myriad of issues with this complaint, but we can nip it in the bud quickly with a tweet from Dean Blandino, the NFL VP of Officiating.
On FG block last night the ball was spotted on the 33 1/2-yard line. Video/pics going around have line drawn through 33.
— Dean Blandino (@DeanBlandino) December 1, 2015
BOOM.
But just to confirm what Blandino is saying, here’s a quick screen grab from the 3rd down stop on the previous play to set the LOS for 4th down.
As Blandino stated, the LOS for 4th down was clearly at the 33.5 yard line, and realistically should have had the nose of the ball placed on the 34.
As for his note about the LOS shown on the screen shot being at the 33, that’s due to ESPN not moving the LOS from the previous play.
Which turned into this screen shot (which we’ve fixed).
Suffice it to say, Brad Allen’s crew got this one right, Browns conspiracy theorists got it wrong, and Cleveland fans shouldn’t hold their breath waiting on an apology or admission of error coming from the officials anytime soon.
