Rich Weighs In on the Saints vs Lions Week 1 Officiating Controversy

Lions and Saints was not close to the top of the Week 1 marquee. Chicago and Carolina combined for 96 points. Buffalo and Houston delivered. Cincinnati and Tampa got loose. Detroit hosting New Orleans was supposed to be background noise.

Then Detroit went up 21-0, and the game went to overtime anyway.

Tyler Shough was getting rid of the ball fast from the jump and finished with 410 yards. Taysom Hill channeled his inner Drew Brees on a throw. Rashid Shaheed was superb, and Chris Olave and Shaheed together struck Rich as less a receiving corps than a fall crime drama on ABC.

"Sounds like a new crime fighting duo," he said. Two sons of Cagney and Lacey, no relation to Tango and Cash.

But the reason anyone is still talking about this game is seven points the Saints never got.

It was 7-0. Jared Goff got blown up by Chase Young, who was terrific, and the ball came loose. It was not just loose, it was rolling toward the Detroit end zone. New Orleans scooped and scored.

Then came the review, and Rich's first reaction was the same one most people had.

"What are we reviewing? What's to look at?"

What officials looked at was Goff's arm. The ruling was that it was moving forward, which made the play an incomplete pass rather than a fumble. Mike Pereira explained that moving the hand forward establishes intent to throw forward, regardless of which direction the ball then travels.

Detroit football. Officiated properly.

"What sort of word salad is that?" Rich asked. "I didn't need that roughage in my diet today."

Dan Campbell, to his credit, did not pretend it was clean.

"I'll take that one. I thought we lost that one," Campbell said. "But the arm was going forward. It had a forward motion. That was how they saw it. We got one, we'll take that."

Yeah, Rich said. You bet you will.

The explanation got more detailed from there. PFWA pool reporter Ben Raven interviewed the league's vice president of instant replay, a job title that came as news to the entire studio, held by a man named Mark Butterworth. The show did what any room would do with that name, and it took a minute.

Butterworth's answer was precise. If the defender contacts the passer before the passer starts his throwing motion, it can be ruled a backward pass. Goff had already started his throwing motion when Young hit him, so it was a forward pass.

"The determining factor is does the passer begin his throwing motion prior to contact from the defender," Butterworth said. "The throwing motion starts as he begins to bring the ball up as part of his windup, and then the defender's contact made the pass go backwards."

The rulebook backs him. Any intentional forward movement of the hand while holding the ball to pass starts a forward pass. And if contact by an opponent materially affects a passer after he begins his throwing motion, it is a forward pass regardless of where the ball ends up hitting the ground, a player, an official or anything else. Intentional grounding does not apply.

Which is exactly Rich's point, and it is not the one Saints fans expect.

The call was correct. That is the problem.

"If there is a rule in the rule book that tells you as an NFL fan that what you have seen with your own two eyes is not what you saw with your own two eyes, that rule needs to be thrown out of the book."

He has been here before. This is the same logic that killed the tuck rule. When a quarterback stops throwing and brings the ball down to tuck it, his intention is plainly that he no longer wishes to throw. The rulebook decided otherwise for years until enough people admitted it was absurd.

Goff was throwing it. Rich grants that completely. The hand moved forward and the intent existed. But the ball went backwards, and a ball that goes backwards is live.

"My eyes saw it," he said. "Sorry, Saints fans. That was ridiculous, but properly officiated according to the rules."

Someone at the desk offered the shorter version. The Saints got hosed.

The overtime finish drew its own debate, and Rich liked the aggression. New Orleans went for two rather than extend a period that was not going to last long enough to matter, and he thought it was the right call. What he would rather fix is the format.

"Give me another five minutes," he said of regular season overtime.

As for the team that lost, Rich is not filing this under moral victory. He is filing it under warning.

"Everybody thinks the Saints are a homecoming. Look out."