In the Denver Broncos 38-6 demolition of the Atlanta Falcons, there were 10 accepted penalties and two reviews. These numbers show average official involvement, but the result from the field was more impressive. Here were some notable calls from the officials.

Personal Foul on Garett Bolles

Garett Bolles had a rare personal foul called on him for unnecessary roughness. In this case, I am fairly confident that the judgment of umpire Tab Slaughter was that Bolles threw his body into a player on the ground. This was a pretty borderline call if so, however, it both fit the letter of the rule and was a deescalating call. I was a bit surprised to see it in this matchup, but there were several parts of the game where tensions between the two teams got abnormally high. Calling something like this foul to the absolute letter of the rule is a good way to help both teams calm down.

Intentional Grounding

There were questions last week about a very questionable Patrick Mahomes call that easily could have been called intentional grounding. I wanted to explain intentional grounding a bit more this week because Bo Nix had a pass that very easily could have been called intentional grounding but was not. The standard for intentional grounding penalty is that the passer threw a ball, under imminent threat from the defense, with no realistic chance of completion. Intentional grounding is ignored when a quarterback outside the pocket throws a pass that reaches the line of scrimmage. This standard sucks to officiate, because there is enormous ambiguity in a realistic chance of completion. This term is defined “a pass thrown in the direction of and lands in the vicinity of an originally eligible receiver”, but the definition still does not provide us much help. Players in the NFL are so fast, and routes cross the field in such a way, that it is really impossible for officials to know what is realistic. Plus option route mistakes are relatively common, and we do not want to call the receiver making the wrong break a penalty. So officials call intentional grounding very generously. This is the type of standard that can change rapidly, because its not really a rule but rather a choice by the NFL officiating department on how the rule will be interpreted.

Replay Review

Early in the third quarter, there were two different replay reviews. The first was of a Lil’Jordan Humphrey incomplete pass that was reversed into a catch and fumble. Mike Periera expressed his astonishment that the call was overturned, believing it did not meet the elements of a catch. While I was thrilled for Denver that the call was overturned, I agreed with Periera. A catch requires two feet and something else, and I was comfortable with the notion that Humphrey had one foot and something else, or possibly two feet and nothing else, but he seemed significantly short of making a catch to me.

On the next drive, Denver challenged a spot that would have set up third and one on an Estime catch, and had the call overturned to a first down. This is an interesting situation. First, the replay was unambiguous, Estime had the first down. However, its not clear that he should have been awarded the first down. The spot that had him short was very consistent with the spotting of the ball during the game (the officials were consistently very strict and a bit stingy perhaps). That challenge made the ruling less consistent with how other similar plays were being spotted, so there is a strong argument that he should not have been awarded the first down.

These two reviews highlight one thing I continue to believe, which is that teams should be less afraid of challenging in impactful situations. Even if you think you are not going to succeed, a timeout is a relatively small price to pay and you can get surprising results that significantly break the normal expectation of the game.

Official Evaluation

This was a well-officiated game of football. There was one bad a call and a few questionable calls, but mostly it was very by the book. Line judge Derek Anderson and down judge Derick Bowers were very strict on spotting the ball, frequently making their own jobs harder than necessary to avoid the possibility of ever giving an extra foot of distance to either team. This was not my favorite kind of spotting, but it was profoundly consistent throughout the game. They were also very patient on offensive formations.

Probably the most indicative part of the game was a non-call. Referee Alan Eck described it this way “The man in motion went beyond the center, therefore there is no foul for crackback block.” This was a very confusing explanation. What happened on the play is Denver had a man in motion from left to right (Nate Adkins) who blocked downfield. At the snap, TE Adam Trautman also went from where he had bee on the left side and blocked the defensive end to the right of the formation (barely past the center). As he had gone past the center, his block was not towards the center, and therefore was legal. After seeing the replay many times, I could squint and understand what Eck meant, but live it was rather confusing. The good news is that while there was a long delay (surely replay was checking that Trautman had gone past the center), the result was a correct call. I called this non-call indicative, because like most of the work from Alan Eck and crew, it was not perfection, but it was a good day. They spotted a lot of tricky but correct penalties, and had the good judgment to leave some unnecessary things alone.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments or to send me an email. While I rarely make unsolicited comments on non-Broncos games, if you have any rules questions from other games I am happy to either reply in the comments or if the matter is of enough concern in next weeks column.