Referees Got It Wrong Again in Saints Vs Houston
Rams 27, Saints 9
Drew Brees' Injury and Another Bad Phone call Add together to Saints' Pain
A second-quarter touchdown was chosen back, and New Orleans struggled to score with its quarterback out with a manus injury.
LOS ANGELES — Sean Payton coped by quarantining himself for three days. He binged Netflix programming ("Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes" and "You") and scarfed Jeni's First-class ice cream. He could excavate his grief, compartmentalizing just non forgetting — really, you tin't forget an injustice like that — considering the officiating debacle that well-nigh likely denied his New Orleans Saints a Super Bowl berth occurred in their final game of the season.
Yet Payton, the Saints' head coach, watched some other blown call benefit the Los Angeles Rams and infuriate his squad again on Sunday, nullifying a go-ahead touchdown in the first half. This time, he and the Saints did not accept an off-season to work through their emotions. More than two quarters remained, and the Saints' star quarterback, Drew Brees, lingered on the sideline, out after their second possession with an injured right thumb.
As it did in the teams' last matchup 8 months ago, New Orleans lost to the Rams, and at this stage all the Saints want is a game officiated adequately, without man error — not their ain, at least — contributing to their demise.
To exist sure, other aspects of their 27-9 defeat at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum irked Payton, who fumed afterward about the Saints' meager offensive production — 244 full yards; their shoddy tackling, especially on Cooper Kupp's 66-chiliad catch-and-run that prepare up the touchdown that secured the Rams' victory; and the operation of their offensive line, which immune the Rams' defensive menace, Aaron Donald, to testify once more than that he is the shortest altitude between two points.
It was Donald who, on Brees's third-downward incompletion to Jared Melt, shed a block and blasted him on his follow-through. Countless times before, Brees had jammed fingers on helmets. At one time he sensed that this felt different, worse, more significant: He couldn't, for the first time, grip the football game. He planned to encounter afterwards Sunday with a hand specialist in Southern California merely, based on his despondent mood and the splint encasing his pollex, information technology seemed he was bracing for an extended absence. Just one time, in 2015, since Brees joined the Saints xiii years agone has he missed a start because of injury.
"I actually don't know at this bespeak," Brees said later on the game. On Monday morning time, the injury was revealed to be a torn ligament which will reportedly require surgery.
Brees'south health is the squad's foremost business organization heading into next week's game at Seattle, only the indelible memory for the Saints (1-1) will be the same equally it was later the deflating N.F.C. title game loss, when late in the quaternary quarter Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman, without result, clobbered receiver Tommylee Lewis before the ball arrived, and Los Angeles went on to win in overtime. They volition wonder whether an officiating crew will go a disquisitional call right.
"When people are at the top of their craft," said defensive stop Cameron Hashemite kingdom of jordan, whose fumble return for a touchdown was negated, "normally that doesn't happen, right?"
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This week, the Saints confronted their by only because they were forced to. The schedule dictated that they play the Rams (2-0), and so the Saints spent the week recalling the worst moment of their careers.
They answered questions. They glimpsed highlights. They relived the misery that had been processed, cataloged, lodged away — then, on a micro level, did so once again on Sunday. With about half dozen minutes left in the second quarter, Trey Hendrickson stripped the ball from Rams quarterback Jared Goff at the Saints' 19-yard line. Cam Jordan scooped information technology upward and ran it back for a touchdown — or so he idea.
The play had been blown dead as an incompletion, then even though the Saints were granted possession afterward video review reversed the call to a fumble, they were given the ball at their own 13, where Hashemite kingdom of jordan recovered the brawl. Instead of taking the atomic number 82, they turned the brawl over on downs, and the Rams, capitalizing on a brusk field, kicked a field goal to go up, 6-3, at halftime.
"The things we tin can control as coaches are the things that I just alluded to," said Payton, referencing the Saints' 11 penalties, poor running game (xx carries, 57 yards) and pressure immune. "When we become poor officiating or an awful phone call like that, we can't control that."
It was Jordan who hinted of an officiating bias against the Saints after the N.F.C. title game loss, acknowledging the team's combative relationship with the league that dates to Bountygate, when members of the team'south coaching staff were determined to take rewarded players who injured opponents. Jordan once again derided the officials on Sunday, comparing them to Foot Locker employees (who wear black-and-white striped shirts) and maxim he never heard the whistle.
"I'm certain the Northward.F.L. will come out with another argument near it," Jordan said.
The non-phone call that afternoon last year in New Orleans was and then egregious that — with the input of Payton, a fellow member of the league'due south competition commission — the rules were inverse for this season, with coaches permitted to claiming an official'due south judgment when pass interference isn't chosen. (However tempted he might have been on Sunday, Payton did not challenge the starting time pass play.) By calculation a subjective element to replay, that experiment has created problems while solving others, but it at least seeks to correct a wrong.
There is no mechanism in place to reverse what happened on Sunday, or in Week 1 when the Saints played Houston and should accept had fifteen additional seconds as they hurried to try to score earlier halftime. Wil Lutz missed a long field-goal endeavor, just redeemed himself by making a longer one, the 58-yard game winner, every bit time expired.
With Teddy Bridgewater ineffective behind that struggling line in relief of Brees on Sunday, going 17 of 30 for 165 yards, Lutz supplied the Saints' offense, boot 3 field goals. The first two kept the score close, at 6-6, midway into the third quarter. The 3rd came later on Todd Gurley and Brandin Cooks scored touchdowns on consecutive drives, taking a twenty-vi atomic number 82 that New Orleans never threatened.
Beyond the by 22 months, the Rams and the Saints have played four times — the Rams winning three — establishing a rivalry between 2 productive offenses coached by innovative masterminds named Sean. The Rams would love their double-decker, Sean McVay, and quarterback, Goff, to indistinguishable the success and longevity of Payton and Brees in New Orleans. The Saints, having won a Super Bowl and been deprived of a chance at a 2nd, want practiced news about their star quarterback and a clean game already.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/15/sports/football/saints-rams-referees.html
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