The opening drive of Sunday’s NFC Championship included an opening-drive fourth-down conversion that shouldn’t have been.
Receiver DeVonta Smith made what appeared to be a great catch on fourth and three from the San Francisco 35. 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan could have challenged the play, but the key replay wasn’t immediately available.
Some have suggested that Shanahan should have realized from the manner in which the Eagles rushed to the line to snap the ball that something about the catch was amiss. Still, without seeing the play, the idea of burning a challenge on a hunch that early in the game made little sense.
Enter expedited review. As explained during the game, the NFL has the power to alter plays without a formal replay review. Under one of various specific categories in the rulebook (more on that in a later post), the replay assistant or the league office can intervene, if the ruling on the field was clearly and obviously wrong.
As to the Smith non-catch, the league office has access to all Fox camera angles, and more, in real time. The evidence was available to be seen, if someone had enough time to see it.
That’s where the longstanding habit of teams rushing to snap the ball becomes critical. As Chris Simms pointed out during Monday’s PFT Live, in what other sport is the action rushed forward to prevent a mistake from being fixed?
In this case, how hard would it be for the league office to instruct the referee to pause the action so that expedited review wouldn’t have to be quite so expedited?
Would it slow the game down by 10 or 20 seconds? Sure. But if the goal is to get things right, it’s time well spent.
It’s a case-by-case, know-it-when-you-see-it test. For the same reason Shanahan should have wondered whether a challenge flag may have been justified, the league office should have realized that the Eagles were trying to cut off any type of review process by getting the ball snapped.
Consider the difference in this case. Instead of the Eagles getting an ill-gotten first and goal that, two plays later, became a touchdown, the 49ers would have had a first and 10 from their own 35.
With or without the Brock Purdy injury (which may or may not have happened if the ensuing drive had begun at the 35 instead of the 25), things would have been very different as a result of the first drive of the game.
The league is fortunate that the catch and the touchdown it set up didn’t impact the outcome of the game. But the league should treat the situation as if it did, in order to spur the kind of change necessary to ensure that a team won’t short-circuit expedited review by getting the ball snapped and cutting off any chance to fix a clear and obvious mistake.