RandBall: How did they miss that?! Fans outraged over missed call in Vikings game

For the second time in less than a week, Minnesota fans (and plenty of impartial observers, too) are outraged over an officiating blunder that helped decide the outcome of a critical game.

The latest example, coming on the heels of how Game 5 of the WNBA Finals was decided on Sunday, came on the Vikings’ final offensive play in a 30-20 loss to the Rams on “Thursday Night Football.”

With the Vikings trailing 28-20 and trying to move 95 yards for an improbable game-tying touchdown and two-point conversion, quarterback Sam Darnold was dragged down in the end zone for a safety.

The problem? Byron Young grabbed Darnold’s facemask as part of the tackle. Darnold’s head twisted as he fell to the ground. Young put two hands on his helmet in seeming recognition that he had committed a penalty. But with two officials in the vicinity of the play, no flags were thrown.

Referee Tra Blake, who has the main responsibility for calling that sort of penalty, told a pool reporter after the game: “The quarterback was facing the opposite direction from me, so I did not have a good look at it. I did not have a look, and I did not see the face mask being pulled, obviously.”

On TV, I’ll admit it was hard to see what happened in real time. Watching the replay, one can see Young also had a hold of Darnold’s shoulder pad. He clearly also had the facemask, but such a play is not reviewable (though ironically it might have been if it was up to the Rams).

To me, it was No. 8 or so on the list of reasons why the Vikings lost — as I talked about on Friday’s Daily Delivery podcast. Their secondary was shredded for the second straight week. Their offensive line was suspect, particularly after Christian Darrisaw left with an injury. Their pass rush was non-existent. No wide receiver aside from Justin Jefferson came to play, a theme all year. The list goes on and on.

But it’s also understandable why fans were somewhere between incredulous and livid about it. Some examples:

Indeed, there were some questionable penalties that went against the Vikings — particularly a bogus third down defensive holding call on Byron Murphy Jr. that extended the Rams’ second touchdown drive. After the game, nobody remembered anything but the one that was badly missed.

Again, from my vantage point, I could see how they missed it in real time. They didn’t have a great angle, and on the replay you could see the referee telling an irate Darnold that he thought Young only grabbed his shoulder.

It looked far worse (and more obvious) after every painful replay, just as the non-travel and questionable foul at the end of regulation did in Sunday’s Lynx loss.

Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell handled it much differently than Reeve in his postgame comments, though it should be noted that the Vikings were not playing for a championship and still would have had just a slim chance of winning the game Thursday (as opposed to the Lynx) even if the call had been made properly. Going 80 yards in 90 seconds with no timeouts and still needing a two-point conversion to tie would have been a tall task, even if we would have liked to see them try.

“It looked like he got a pretty good amount of face mask there. Not gonna get into, you know, the call or no call and all that stuff,” O’Connell said when asked about it. “I told our team officiating and all that stuff for us to talk about that, for us to seek comfort in that, is not how we’re going to respond to this. It’s just not gonna happen. And I’m gonna do the same thing right now.”

Officiating is hard in a world of high-definition TVs and seemingly infinite replay angles. Former player J.J. Watt made a good point about what is being asked of them.

Minnesota fans would probably settle for some good, old-fashioned drama-free mediocre officiating the next time a big game comes along.