What would you say you do here?
Referees were the talk of “Thursday Night Football” after Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold was clearly brought down in his own end zone by the facemask to all but end the game as Minnesota was starting its final drive trailing by eight points.
Referee Tra Blake spoke to a pool reporter after the Rams’ 30-20 win, as fans were flabbergasted that the clear infraction did not result in a penalty.
“The quarterback was facing the opposite direction from me, so I did not have a good look at it,” Blake said. “I did not have a look, and I did not see the face mask being pulled, obviously.”
However, the confounding part of Blake’s comments is that he was standing right behind Darnold as his head turned nearly completely around due to the facemask in a 28-20 game.
The reporter then asked whether their crew had discussed it together after Darnold clearly went down and put his hands up as if to tell the referee what had occurred.
“On the field we definitely did discuss it because they did bring up a concern. We discussed it as a crew, but we weren’t able to see it on the field, so we weren’t able to make that call,” Blake said.
Blake then explained that penalties are not able to be checked on review.
“It looked like he got a pretty good amount of facemask there,” Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell said as he carefully tried to avoid getting fined for criticizing refs.
“Not going to get into the call or no call or all that stuff. I told our team officiating, for us to talk about that, seek comfort in that is not how we’re going to respond to this. It’s just not going to happen, I really don’t have a comment. They didn’t think so, so they didn’t throw the flag.”
Minnesota was out-gained by Los Angeles, 386-272, in a disappointing loss, as Matthew Stafford welcomed the returns of receivers Puka Nacua and Cooper Kupp.