The controversy could be that no official blew a whistle. Even if you “give yourself up,” you haven’t officially done so until an official blows a whistle signalling a dead ball. When Cruz let go of the ball, it was officially live and should have been a fumble. As Omniscient indicated, the “giving up” probably wasn’t very convincing, hence no whistle.
I haven’t heard any commentator make that case, but it’s a good one if true. However the refs in the game didn’t allow the Cards to challenge it which implies to me that a whistle was blown.
That would make sense, but I have no idea when the whistle was blown. I’m surprised that isn’t a bigger part of the conversation.
On edit: Good point, Omniscient. Maybe it isn’t part of the conversation because it was clearly blown.
Some random Twitter comments form the ESPNChicago guys.
ESPNChiBears Dickerson and Wright
Laughed when told this in locker room: ‘We were hitting Steve Smith so hard. But he would get up and just yell at us. It was weird, man.’ JD
ESPNChiBears Dickerson and Wright
Here’s a cool Bears stat: Matt Forte on pace for 2,536 all-purpose yards. That is amazing. JD
And one from Simmons:
sportsguy33 Bill Simmons
Sanchez and Flacco should just start flinging poop at each other.
Yeah, I’m just theorizing, taking a guess trying to answer Brandon’s question about a controversy existing. I have no idea whether a whistle blew or not. Can’t tell in the YouTube video.
Honestly, if I was interested in reading the Twitter comments from the ESPN guys, couldn’t I just go find them myself?
What the fuck is your problem?
A few years back I recall speculating that Detroit might be forced by idiots into skipping Calvin Johnson in the draft, because they’d receive mockery from everyone (and scorn from fans) about drafting yet another WR in the first, regardless of the fact that their other ones were out of the league, with other teams, or useless.
Well, Detroit managed to make the smart move that looked dumb to idiots, and it’s really paying off.
Dandy Andy Dalton (aka Ninja Ginga, Ginger Jesus, Red Rifle, etc) with a nice 2nd half to seal the Bengals win over the Jills…and I have to say that the AFCN is a really strong defensive division this season so far…offenses have been all over the place by all four teams. And the Bengals D is legit…if the offense can develop some consistency over the course of the season they will be dangerous going forward.
Posting from the three-way tie that is the AFCN basement at 2-2…
Fucking Ratbirds…
This post should have been deleted under category 1 in this thread you started.
:rolleyes:
Through four games the AFCN is indeed the best defensive conference in the NFL. Check it out: NFL 2023 REG - offense passing stats
The top three overall NFL defenses through four games in order are Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Baltimore. None of the teams appears as a statistical leader on offense.
And now they get to play each other’s poor offenses, so their defensive stats will really impress!!!
You quoted three different twitter feeds that were meaningless with no context, and with no content of your own. If the goal of the thread is to offer up random twitters from sportswriter, fine, I’ll stay out of it.
To be fair, it isn’t like the AFCN teams have played all crappy offenses so far this season.
Nominee #1 for Sandy Vagina of the Year: Arizona defensive tackle Calais Campbell (bolding of exceptionally laughable statement mine)
On the Cruz play, I saw post game comments from Eli Manning, and he seemed to think they got away with one on the call. After watching the video, I think he’s right. I would have ruled it a fumble…I see no obvious “giving himself up”. I see the receiver stumble, I see no one touch him, I see no “down by contact”, and I see him inexplicably abandon the football. If I was his coach, he’d be running laps from now until Hell freezes over.
To be fair St. Louis and Minnesota have both invested high draft picks on QB’s the last two years.
It’s actually quite explicable why he abandoned the football. Because he had given himself up and went to the ground and was down.
As Plaxico proved many years ago, that doesn’t always matter.
The refs had a judgment call to make, and no matter which way it went someone was getting screwed. It seems like a bad call now, though, because you get guys like Eli going before the cameras with a shit-eating grin talking about how they got away with one.
I assume that’s what he thought he was doing. It did not appear to be what he actually did, as I see it.