Takeaways from Detroit Lions loss to Kansas City Chiefs
Detroit Lions lose to Chiefs: Dave Birkett and Shawn Windsor break down the Week 6 game in Kansas City.
The Detroit Lions may still have beef with how the NFL handled a crucial call in the team’s 30-17 Week 6 loss against the Kansas City Chiefs, but the league has a different version of the story.
The NFL’s executive VP of football operations, Troy Vincent, was interviewed by Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk on Thursday, Oct. 23, and he was asked about a controversial illegal motion penalty that nullified a first-quarter trick-play touchdown pass from Lions running back David Montgomery to quarterback Jared Goff.
Lions coach Dan Campbell has maintained that referee Craig Wrolstad got outside assistance from the league office before making the penalty call, a claim that Vincent denies.
“I’m not sure who Coach Campbell was referring to, but we did not assist in that,” he said.
The play looked to give the Lions an initial 6-0 lead over the defending AFC champions, with Goff initially bobbling the 4th-and-goal pass, catching it and then muscling his way into the end zone. But after a brief delay, the officials called an illegal motion penalty on Goff as he hadn’t stopped for at least a second to set himself before motioning out wide.
After the penalty and loss of yardage, the Lions kicked a field goal instead of trying again for the end zone.
Vincent said that the delay from the end of the play to the penalty ruling was a result of the on-field officials communicating with one another, not a phone call with replay officials in Kansas City or at the league office in New York.
“You can hear the officials gathering in this particular case … but we didn’t have to get involved in this particular play,” he said.
In a postgame pool report, Wrolstad denied using outside assistance to make the call, but Campbell doubled-down on his insistence in a radio interview last Wednesday on WXYT-FM (97.1) that the referees got outside help.
Nevertheless, the Lions were the beneficiaries of a controversial call in the fourth quarter of their Week 7 matchup against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, when the referees initially upheld a call in response to a Lions’ challenge, giving the Buccaneers a first down on a fourth-down pass from quarterback Baker Mayfield to tight end Cade Otton. But the call was then reversed on a ruling Detroit wasn’t even challenging, forcing a turnover on downs and giving the Lions a crucial possession.
This time, Campbell didn’t stretch out his opinions on the call.
“Normally, it doesn’t always go down that way,” Campbell said on Tuesday. “We’ll take it and move on.”
You can reach Christian at cromo@freepress.com.