Yup, it's all over-officiated. I don't even really like replay, or at a minimum I could live without it. The only time I feel good about it is if it overturns a horrible error by the officials. But the "tuck rule" and that type of stuff loses the plot. Replay was never meant to be a frame-by-frame thing where we're trying to determine if a foot grazed a blade of grass and so on.JWL wrote:When I saw the play live I knew something funky happened. Then during the first replay, I thought Seferian-Jenkins had transferred the ball on purpose from his left hand to his right because the defender on his left was going for the ball. We do see ball carriers from time to time transfer the ball from one hand to the other. It is usually always in the open field, though. That was the one thing several replays had to clear up for me. The difference between me and some of these officials is I would not be throwing a flag or blowing a whistle unless I was certain I saw something that merited a flag or whistle (see my Rams-Jaguars comment). If I was an official in the Patriots-Jets game I would have called the play a touchdown.
When Seferian-Jenkins hit the turf, I believe he had regained possession of the ball and he had crossed the end zone. What it appears I am missing here is he was supposed to get feet or knees in the end zone, that his back and shoulder don't count and he has to touch his hand and toes and do the hokey pokey. No..... I can't anymore. Nurse!
Had there been no replay no one would even be talking about the ASJ TD. A very small percentage of those watching the game might have picked up on the fumble and then thought he got it back anyway. Even fewer would have went to thinking about him being in the air, landing out-of-bounds or with a knee inbounds, and if/when he regained clear possession of the football -- and if replay didn't exist maybe no one's thought process would goto those things?
That's why I was surprised they overturned it. Though going off the rules and replay existing, I thought it was a touchback and the correct call, respectively. But in this and the majority of cases, getting the call correct isn't worth the hassle of replay, and it's yet another example of where getting it correct (which is obviously debatable since not all agree) lends itself to tiresome parsing of the rulebook by most involved. From media to the casual fan -- and even those very aware of the rules likely have to look things up again or need to be reminded. The sport is over-officiated and the rulebook is bloated with the inane. Though this situation was a simpler case of "possession", even that evidently isn't all that simple.