Raiders coach Antonio Pierce is mostly to blame for the mismanagement of the final seconds of Friday’s game against the Chiefs. That does not absolve the NFL of potential mismanagement in the officiating of the play that resulted in the game-winning fumble.
Pierce said Saturday that the Las Vegas sideline heard a whistle that ended the play, based on at least one crew member’s mistaken belief that the Raiders had committed a false start, not an illegal shift, prior to the snap.
On Sunday, NFL in-house rules analyst Walt Anderson spoke with the NFL’s internal media outlet about the matter. However, he only addressed part of it.
Anderson clarified that, because the clock was stopped at the time of the foul, the Raiders committed an illegal shift rather than a false start. (An illegal shift on a running clock after the two-minute warning of either half results in a false start with a 10-second runoff.)
Anderson is completely correct about that point. However, he utterly missed the more troublesome side of the case, from an officiating perspective.
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