While Lance Easley is still living in some sort of denial where he made the right call at the end of the Green Bay Packers loss to the Seattle Seahawks, the head referee from the game has now admitted his crew made a mistake.
Wayne Elliott told Inside the NFL he initially thought Easley’s call of simultaneous possession and a touchdown on the final play of Seattle’s gift was the right call. Now, he’s not so sure and he admits he didn’t know how to interpret the rule.
“I probably call interception (now),” Elliott said. “… I learned a rule by screwing up the rule. That’s the best way for me to learn them, by screwing them up.”
Great.
Elliott also goes on to say the NFL told its replacement officials not to call pass interference on Hail Marys. There was obvious offensive interference on the final play of the game in question and the NFL even admitted that in the aftermath.
“It was brought up that you don’t really call interference on a Hail Mary,” Elliott said. “Deep officials were trained that during a Hail Mary, there is a lot of bodies in there and you just let it go. That’s from my understanding. I was not in the deep officials training.”
What’s perhaps most surprising (and revealing) is Packers coach Mike McCarthy actually called Elliott in the aftermath of this screw job, not to berate him, but to tell him he handled the situation with class.