So a few questions about the delay of game penalty on the defensive sub.

[UTE98]

I haven’t gone back and looked at the play so am looking for some insight.

1. Did we actually sub? Whit kept yelling, “WE DIDN’T SUB!!!!’

Was that true?

2. It looked like the defender kept running around for like three or four seconds not knowing where he should line up, which the ref kept watching as he stood over the ball.

Why wouldn’t a subbing defender just continue to run around like a chicken with it’s head cut off if it improves the chances of a delay of game penalty?

3. One ref was signalling to reset the play clock. Who do you look at? The guy signalling to reset the play clock, the umpire standing over the ball?

How can one crew of officials be so freaking disorganized? They looked like the freaking keystone cops out there.

We had a chance to win, and didn’t, we lost to a team who overcame three turnovers, and a couple plays could have been overcome, but man it just added to the frustration seeing how bad the officials were on Saturday.

[EagleMountainUte]

I still rate it as the best officiated game on the season. But the standards are so low for PAC12 officiating it still sucks. The only impactful call was that knee being down. Yeah maybe it changes Utah play calling at that moment when they took the delay. Overall wasn’t a huge call. 

[Utah]

Whitt said the refs said they had 12 men on the field, so they stopped play to allow subs. 

Whitt said after film review, they couldn’t find 12 men…so….

[EagleMountainUte]

Counting is hard.

[Utah]

Yeah. Also, it’s not the refs job to officiate 12 men. If we had 12 men on the field, they should have let us snap the ball, then throw a flag for too many men on the field. 

That play has no excuse from the refs. They botched it. 

[EagleMountainUte]

Allowing USC a fair chance to win is what that moment was. It is so transparent I don’t know how else you can spin it. Also the knee being down how many times have you seen that in a game?  If anything most refs call players down too soon. 

[Sweetness]

So overall, I side with @battlegroundute that I felt like I didn’t notice the officials much of the game, and when they did call penalties I felt they were pretty accurate…but their miss on the 4th and 9 where the receiver’s knee was down, likely cost us the game. If the guy in the replay booth doesn’t fall asleep and buzzes that play to be reviewed, we would have held them on downs, gotten the ball back with 6:25 left in the 3rd, relatively good field position (our own 30), up two touchdowns and still had the momentum. Instead, they blew the call, SC scores a few plays later, and we couldn’t stop them the rest of the game. Some bad calls end up having very little impact on the game, this one was absolutely huge. I hate when people try to pin a loss on the refs, but in this instance it’s hard to not look at that and not conclude that their error didn’t have a serious negative impact on the outcome of the game for us.