ALLEN PARK -- Go figure, the Detroit Lions found themselves in another confusing officiating situation during their win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Monday night.
Dan Campbell used both of his challenge flags about 5 minutes apart in the fourth quarter.
On the first one, the Lions coach confirmed he was challenging the completion of the catch. That one came on fourth-and-4 with the Lions leading 21-9. Bucs quarterback Baker Mayfield hit tight end Cade Otton for a 4-yard gain, which originally moved the sticks. Otton lost the ball on the extra effort, but it was ruled that he did not fumble the ball. The officials took a second look, though, and reversed the gain from 4 to 3 yards, giving the Lions the ball via the turnover on downs.
Mark Butterworth, the NFL’s vice president of instant replay, said in the postgame pool report that Campbell “was challenging the line to gain.” When replay officials saw an angle from the television broadcast, they noticed the ball might have been short of the line to gain. They went back to the monitor and reversed the call in an attempt to “communicate to clean up the ruling on the field.”
Butterworth said that when a team challenges a play or the replay officials make the call to take another look, that “by rule, all reviewable aspects of the play are under review.”
This double-review process irked Mayfield, and he didn’t hide from his feelings after the game.
“... still pretty damn confused about the double review,” Mayfield said. “A lot of things in that game were a little questionable, but a lot of frustration at the end of that. It might be displaced onto (referee) John Hussey in the moment, but it’s -- I work my ass off and I put a lot into this game, so when things that I don’t see are deemed fair, I’m going to let somebody know. And that’s good, bad and different.”
The second challenge came a couple of minutes later and might have been even more confusing about what Campbell was looking for. Mayfield lost a fumble via strip-sack by Lions defenders Tyrus Wheat and Al-Quadin Muhammad. The Bucs recovered the fumble that slipped through Tyleik Williams’ grasp for a short gain. Officials said the Lions were challenging that Mayfield was down by contact before the line of scrimmage.
The NFL’s gamebook lists the challenge as for a “loose ball recovery ruling, and the play was upheld.” Tampa Bay gained 3 yards on the play after all that. Campbell said he wanted to check if Mayfield was down before the fumble so that they would get credit for the loss of yardage on the sack.
Social media explanations are running wild with this one, as many are speculating the Lions were trying to get some extra time to rest their short-handed defense. Campbell didn’t give in to those, simply saying it was a bad choice to try and get the sack back.
“Yeah, that was a bad challenge. That was just a total mess up on my part,” Campbell said. “That was me thinking that he was down at the fumble site. That’s more grasping for straws; I shouldn’t have done that. (If) you were totally like, ‘What the hell is he doing?’ You’d be correct.”
“I know that every game, there’s different angles, and it took a while to get the angle that they saw that proved that he did not get the marker. Normally, it doesn’t always go down that way. I don’t know, I’ll take it. We’ll take it and we’ll move on.”
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