A blown call in the Superdome is kind of like a pothole in New Orleans. We all know it's there but we try not to let it bother us too much -- then you drive directly into it and you're left in a rage about why it was never fixed.
That's my analogy, not Darren Rizzi's, but I do think it accurately sums up his tone in his postgame comments when it came to several key plays that he felt the refs didn't quite handle correctly.
Three key mistakes stood out, the first of which was actually beneficial for the Saints.
The phantom freeze
If you were watching the clocks as the Saints rushed to spike the ball to save time at the end of the game, you may have noticed the game clock freeze. That's because an official mistakenly stopped the clock.
You can clearly see the mixup on the broadcast. The stoppage lasted about 3 seconds, with the Saints ultimately spiking the ball with 3 seconds to go.
"The covering official mistakenly stopped the clock in that situation. The clock should not have stopped," said head official Shawn Hochuli in a pool report after the game.
When pressed for more details, this is how Hochuli addressed it: "That's all I have for you. ... The covering official mistakenly stopped the clock at 9 seconds and it is not reviewable."
Ultimately the stoppage didn't swing the result because the Saints' 2-point conversion failed. It's also fair to point out that the spike would've almost certainly still gotten off in time, but it would've forced a bit more urgency in the operation and come very close to the wire. Awkward.
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Turner's foul
There were two instances in this game that sent Rizzi to the verge of apoplexy, and the first came on the Commanders' opening drive. The Saints had forced a field goal attempt that Greg Joseph knocked through. OK, 3-0 Commanders, let's see how the Saints can ans... oh wait, there's a flag, of course there is.
Saints defensive end Payton Turner was flagged for unnecessary roughness. What did he do?
"The explanation that I got is that Payton Turner crossed over the long snapper and his back leg brushed the head of the long snapper," Rizzi said. "That’s the explanation that I got, so you know, the long snapper is a defenseless player, there’s no doubt about that. If anybody is in favor of that, it’s me as a special teams background. ... I’ll have to watch it and have an opinion for myself, but on the replay that I saw, that’s not really what I saw.”
Rizzi was calling for Hochuli to come over for quite a while after the call, but his complaints fell on deaf ears. He was still clearly upset about the call after the game, because the foul turned a field goal into an extended Commanders drive for a touchdown that set the tone for the game.
"You guys saw the play, so, yea, I’m skating on thin ice as it is, so I’m gonna bite my tongue," Rizzi said, "but I disagreed with the call."
The late kick
Don't worry, there's a third and most inexplicable gaff from the officials in this game, and it involved something as simple as understanding how to end a quarter.
In most cases when the quarter ends it immediately comes with whistles and refs running in from all sides, waving their arms to make sure play is over, but that's not what happened at the end of the third quarter.
The situation came on another 4th down with the Saints holding for a field goal. Commanders kicker Greg Joseph had lined up to kick a 41-yard field goal after a diving catch that Rizzi was considering challenging. He was standing next to the official, flag in hand, trying to sort everything out when nothing made much sense.
"I’m trying to figure out and communicate with up top whether we’re gonna challenge the catch or not and I’m talking to the official," Rizzi said. "I’m saying hey I might challenge this, I might challenge this, hey, the quarter’s over, the quarter’s over, the quarter’s over, the quarter’s over, the quarter’s over. For about 4 or 5 seconds they let the play go."
It's true, well after the expiration of the third quarter the Commanders were allowed to snap the ball and Joseph get a practice kick. The kick missed. The Dome erupted, but wait, more nonsense (even though by that point it was correct nonsense). The kick occurred after the expiration of the quarter. They'll switch ends and kick again, this time he knocks it through.
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"The play shouldn’t have been allowed to go on. They gave the field goal kicker basically a freebie," Rizzi said. "They gave him a mishit and so, I’ve been coaching kickers for 30 years, you give a guy a warmup shot he’s got a pretty good shot of hitting the second one. The success rate goes through the roof when a guy gets a second chance. So that’s where my gripe was."
In a game that was decided by one point, the Commanders put up 7 points and the Saints 6 on plays that were directly preceded by officiating blunders. Much like the potholes in New Orleans, all you can do is swerve and hope you don't hit anything else. It's never getting fixed.
"It was [poor] game management from the officials operations, I’ll let the league handle it, but I hope that – you know, everybody else gets held accountable in this league," Rizzi said. "I hope that the people that mismanaged that get held accountable, too, because it was completely mishandled.”