We'll Take It

I've never seen this call before in all my years following the NFL. I agree that it wasn't clear who came up with the ball from the replay but I never knew that would even be replay-determinable. I remember an on-side kick in a game between the Steelers in Cincinnati back in the late 90's (I believe). Cincinnati kicked off, a Steeler clearly fell on the ball and had possession prior to the entire Cincinnati squad piling on top of him. To me, when the first Cincinnati player touched him the play should have been over ("down by contact") with the Steelers getting possession. Instead, the scrum was allowed to continue and, a full 3 minutes later, a Cincinnati player was pulled out of the pile with the ball. Cincinnati was awarded possession, tied the game, and won in OT. What? Same question yesterday, "What?" As I understand it if that had situation had occurred in the final two minutes, the ball would have automatically gone to Miami as Roethlisberger would have had to have recover the fumble himself.


As Mike Prisuta said on Talking Steelers Football, "Get better officials, get rid of replay, the call stands, live with it." AMEN.


We'll take the win.

With respect to another recent controversy, I don't understand how the NFL is going to make helmet-to-helmet calls when they can't even make a fumble recovery call.