For the second straight year, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are picking up the pieces after a loss on Thursday Night Football that was largely impacted by officiating.
The missed facemask call on Bucky Irving was unacceptable, but it did not hand the Atlanta Falcons a win. What ultimately cost the Bucs a win was allowing Kirk Cousins to throw for 509 yards and failing to play lockdown defense on the final two drives of the game.
However, the missed facemask call did give the Falcons new life and opened a lane for the conclusion we all witnessed.
After Lavonte David picked off Kirk Cousins with under two minutes left and the Bucs up by three, Bucky Irving's facemask was clearly yanked by Falcons linebacker Kaden Ellis. There was a flag thrown on the play, but it was for holding against Graham Barton. Because there was only one penalty, the Bucs were backed up ten yards and faced a 2nd and 20 that had pushed them just on the outside of Chase McLaughlin's range.
Tampa Bay failed to pick up any yards on the next two plays and needed to punt, and we all know what happened after that.
Had Ellis been flagged, there would have been offsetting penalties and the Bucs would have had 2nd and 10 and likely could have kicked a field goal to make it a six point game. Now, there's still a world where Cousins carves up Tampa's defense and leads an incredible comeback touchdown drive that stings just as much as the loss that did happen, but we'll never know.
Mike Florio wants the NFL to make facemask calls reviewable after Buccaneers get screwed
Last year, the Bucs played a Thursday night game in Buffalo that was subjected to an equal amount of officiating scrutiny. On a Hail Mary play, Chris Godwin was very clearly interfered with and prevented from securing a ball it appeared he was going to catch for a game-winning touchdown.
Mike Florio cited only one of these instances in a piece calling for penalties to be reviewable, but they both apply to his point.
"The Buccaneers were robbed of a chance to close the deal in regulation by an obvious miss of a facemask foul late in the fourth quarter," Florio wrote. "It’s an easy fix, especially as the league uses replay more and more to get calls right ... Put it at the top of the list for the offseason rule changes. Facemask fouls become subject to replay assistance and replay review. It’s long overdue."
Peter King called the NFL out after the Buffalo incident, advocating that Hail Mary passes shouldn't be exempt from non-call rules when a foul is so blatantly obvious. The game goes for the facemask on Irving, which undeniably altered the outcome of the game.
Tampa Bay lost the game on their own by not stopping the Falcons on either of the final two drives of the game. It didn't help, though, that the Falcons' chances to win got an adrenaline shot from an obvious missed call.
Bucs fans have a right to be upset, but it says alot when a national media that usually ignores them is so enraged by what happened that they're siding with Tampa Bay.
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