The Philadelphia-Baltimore game, in particular, careened from one wild post-whistle scrum to the next, with no ejections; from one two-minute warning to another (there were two in the fourth quarter, one with 2:05 left in the game); and from one replay reversal to another (there were three reviews and two reversals), including the strangest and most illogical three-minute delay of the day.
With two minutes left in the game and the ball at the Baltimore 1-yard line, Michael Vick went back to pass, with replacement referee Robert Frazier standing five yards behind him, looking directly at Vick. Haloti Ngata rushed, and just as Ngata wrapped up Vick, the quarterback threw a pass about five yards, incomplete, as he fell to the ground.
The CBS replay from behind, in slow-motion, showed Frazier staring at the play and ruling ... nothing. The other officials looked at one another, unsure what to do, and Frazier jogged into the area around the 2-yard line, where a Raven was laying on the ball. Three officials looked at Frazier, who said something, and then head lineman Michael Bell pointed that it was Baltimore's ball, and a first down. "They're ruling Baltimore football!'' an incredulous Greg Gumbel said on TV. Frazier walked away, fiddling with the microphone on his belt, as if he wanted to say something to the disbelieving crowd, then saying nothing, then, a few seconds later, saying the play was under review.
I should hope so.
Three minutes and three seconds later, Frazier emerged from under the hood to say the play was reversed, and it was an incomplete pass.
Frazier was staring at Vick as he was contacted by Ngata, began to fall, and clearly threw the ball five yards down the field. Maybe it's intentional grounding. Maybe it's a simple incompletion. But to miss that call, or, worse, to be too indecisive to not make the call and simply hope someone else had a better view of it and could rescue you from making a game-turning call, illustrates how ill-suited this crew was for a game of this intensity, this magnitude.