TD that wasn't game's big play
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — A season of seeing not believing reached Week 6 with the Jets — hoping to contend by 2020 if things go exceeding well — at an unlikely 3-2.
In case you need a double-take to grasp that, there may not be anything wrong with your eyesight if you failed to discern one fumble yesterday on the touchdown that turned into a touchback, and thus became the big play in the Patriots’ 24-17 escape against the New York Jets.
The Jets’ Austin Seferian-Jenkins, racing to the corner against Malcolm Butler and Patrick Chung, appeared to make contact with the pylon for a touchdown that would have cut the Pats’ fourth-quarter lead to 2421. Such was the way it was seen to the down judge, who signaled touchdown, and almost everybody on the field but Butler, who began to argue vehemently.
All touchdowns are reviewed in the NFL, and in the control room at league headquarters in New York, it was ruled the tight end fumbled the ball, once as he ran, and again as he made contact with the pylon, making it the same as a ball fumbled over the end zone sideline — a touchback.
“I saw the ball juggle,” Butler said. “I told the referee that the ball came loose as he was going over and we got the call.”
Seferian-Jenkins never lost the ball to the ground and it apparently took angles not available to anyone at home, or in the stadium, to discern what happened. The ruling was technically correct, if you look hard enough.
“He lost the ball. It came out of his control as he was almost to the ground,” referee Tony Corrente told the pool reporter. “Now he re-grasps the ball, and by rule, now he has to complete the process of a recovery, which means he has to survive the ground again. So in recovering it, he recovered, hit the knee, started to roll and the ball came out a second time. So the ball started to move in his hands this way … he’s now out of bounds in the end zone, which now created a touchback. Had he never lost control of the ball in the first place, you would have a touchdown. But because he lost the ball and now has to re-establish control, that was the period of time.”
Jeepers, they have some peepers in New York to discern what is control and what isn’t. Of course it creeped out the Jets, who while they never saw a fumble, to their credit still saw good reason to remind themselves they still would have needed another score to get a game they once led 14-0 to overtime.
“I saw it four times and I feel like I scored, but at the end of the day that’s not what the refs said,” Seferian-Jenkins said. “It went to New York and those were the people they pay to make those decisions. It is out of my control. (The coaches) were harping on ball security and that was a great time to have ball security. I don’t think it does anything for me to come up here and blast the officials, blast the rule. If I catch the ball and run through them, it’s a touchdown.”