The referees made a huge mistake at the end of the Washington Commanders-New Orleans Saints game that nearly cost the NFC East team.
The Commanders were leading the Saints 20-13 in the fourth quarter and New Orleans was trying to score to take the lead or tie the game. Saints quarterback Spencer Rattler completed a pass on 4th-and-3 with 17 seconds left to Foster Moreau that Moreau took down to the 1-yard line.
Moreau got a first down, and for some reason, one of the officials motioned to stop the clock.
The clock stopped with 9 seconds left for a few seconds. The Saints ran up and spiked the ball with 3 seconds left in order to run another play.
New Orleans ended up scoring on the final play of regulation to make it 20-19, though they failed on their 2-point conversion attempt and lost by that score.
Had the officials not stopped the clock, it’s conceivable that time would have run out on the Saints before they would have been able to spike the ball. In other words, the referee’s mistake gave the Saints an extra play and allowed them to nearly win the game.
Referee Shawn Hochuli admitted after the game that his crew had made an error.
“The covering official mistakenly stopped the clock in that situation. The clock should not have stopped,” Hochuli told pool reporter Luke Johnson.
The Commanders still walked away with a win to improve to 9-5, but that’s not something that should be happening in an NFL game.
