The Seattle Seahawks had a night filled with near-turnovers and actual turnovers in their latest loss to the San Francisco 49ers, and should’ve had one that theoretically would’ve killed Seattle’s comeback attempt a lot sooner than it did.
With the Seahawks trailing 23-17, Dee Williams made a late fair catch signal while fielding a punt in the fourth quarter from Mitch Wishnowsky. Chris Conley collided with Williams as the ball reached him, prompting a flag to be thrown for fair catch interference. Replays made it clear that Devon Witherspoon shoved Conley into Williams, and therefore the flag was picked up, but Seahawks ball after the 49ers downed the punt.
Kyle Shanahan challenged the ruling that the ball never hit Williams, which would’ve meant a clear recovery for the 49ers and first down for San Francisco inside the 20. There was nothing from the television angles shown entering commercial break to indicate Williams had touched the ball, so the play stood as called.
After the ruling was made, the hard evidence that Williams did brush the ball with his finger was found. So why didn’t the replay center see this and overturn the call? Well, that’s because they never saw the enhanced Prime Video feed.
“Once we had the San Francisco challenge, we were looking to see if the returner did indeed touch the ball,” Vice President of Instant Replay Mike Butterworth told ESPN’s Brady Henderson. “We went through all available angles, and we get the raw feed from the truck. And there was not clear and obvious video evidence that the returner touched the ball. After looking at all available angles, we made the determination that we were going to stand on the call because there was not clear and obvious video evidence. Once Craig [Wrolstad] made his announcement and they came back from TV, the network had an enhanced shot that they did not send at all until after they played his announcement.”
Rules analyst Terry McAulay confirmed that the NFL command center didn’t get the angle during the review time.
Terry McAulay: They (the command center) did not get our enhanced video that we showed – the ball touching the finger. What they had was the raw feed from our cameras. And it was not clear and obvious to them that it touched the finger. pic.twitter.com/88GxRiHqru
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) October 11, 2024
If this had happened the other way around and the Seahawks had gotten screwed because the critical angle wasn’t shown, we’d be steamed right now (for completely different reasons than the current reasons we’re already steamed). This cannot happen and I don’t really understand how it took so long to just switch to an opposite angle. The 49ers would’ve had the ball in the red zone and likely would’ve put up at least a field goal, so the Seahawks offense’s futile attempt at a game-winning drive would’ve never materialized.
Of course, we’re not going to get out of this article without noting that this is the umpteenth disastrous special teams play of the season.
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