The NFL supposedly was going to admit an error in connection with the illegal formation call in Monday night’s game between the Ravens and Cardinals. And while that may have happened through private communications with the Ravens, the public discussion of the situation did not include a clear acknowledgment that referee Ronald Torbert’s crew got it wrong.
On Tuesday’s edition of NFL Total Access, NFL V.P. of officiating Dean Blandino explained the circumstances resulting in a flag being thrown against Baltimore offensive lineman John Urschel.
‘They are gonna come into the game, like you saw Urschel do and they are gonna basically wave their hands over their chest to signal to the referee that ‘I’m reporting as eligible,’” Blandino said. “It’s important that the referee recognizes that, it’s important that the player gets a visual signal. You’ll see 64 here, he is signaling to the referee.”
So why didn’t Torbert realize Urschel had reported as eligible?
“What the referee was actually doing at that moment, he was correcting a number from a foul on the previous play and he just didn’t recognize 64 signaling to him,” Blandino said.
It sounds like an explanation, bordering on an excuse, for Torbert. And when Blandino says “it’s important that the player gets a visual signal,” it sounds like he’s saying the Ravens bear blame for the penalty because Urschel didn’t pause for Torbert to give him a thumbs up or a nod or something that equates to the referee saying “copy” or “roger” or “over.”
And so it’s not really over, in that there’s no clear closure as to whose fault it was. Possibly, the blame is shared. Possibly, the league’s position is that Torbert did nothing wrong at all, because he had a valid reason for not realizing that Urschel was trying to declare himself eligible to catch a pass.
It’s also not over when it comes to the other controversial call from Monday night, because Tuesday night’s Official Review segment curiously omitted any discussion of the play in which the forward progress of Arizona running back Chris Johnson appeared to have been stopped. The officials didn’t blow the whistle, and Johnson got up and kept going.
And the league hasn’t said, and possibly will never say, whether the officials blew it by not blowing the whistle.