Join the 21st Century, NFL.
The NFL has desperately needed electronic spotting for years now. Now, after the AFC Championship turned on an egregious spot, the NFL has to make implementing it the top priority this off-season. Don’t send it to some committee where it’ll get buried or slow-walked. Don’t say you’ll “try it out.”
Get. It. Done.
Unless, of course, the NFL is cool with fans believing the league and the refs are putting their thumbs on the scale for Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs and increasingly questioning whether this $20-billion industry is any more genuine than WWE. Unless it wants to keep living in the dark ages, doing things the way they were done in the days of leather helmets.
Clinging to a one-point lead early in the fourth quarter, the Buffalo Bills went for it on fourth-and-1 with a Josh Allen sneak. It looked as if Allen got the first down ‒ by several inches, no less ‒ before being shoved backward.
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One of the line judges appeared to concur, trotting onto the field just above the first-down line. But another didn’t, coming onto the field below it, and the initial call was that Allen hadn’t gotten the first down. Which, OK, fine. It’s not always easy to tell at the moment when there’s that big pile of bodies.
But then the call was upheld on review, and CBS rules analyst Gene Steratore spoke for everyone who is not a Chiefs fan.
“I felt like he gained it by about a third of the football,” Steratore, who was an NFL official for 15 years, said.
And that’s from a guy who once needed an index card to make a first-down call!
‘I thought he had it,’ Bills head coach Sean McDermott said after the game. ‘Just short of the line was actually the first down ‒ what it looked like to me ‒ when it was sitting next to me with the marker. Just inside that white stripe was the first down. It looked like he got to it. That’s all I can say.’
Five plays later, Mahomes rushed for a score that gave the Chiefs a 29-22 lead. The Bills would tie the game again, but Kansas City kicked a field goal and Buffalo couldn’t answer. The Chiefs won, 32-29, to reach Super Bowl 59 against Philadelphia.
Now, there’s no telling if the Bills would have won the game if Allen had gotten that first down early in the fourth quarter. There were still almost 13 minutes left in the game, and the Chiefs are near-impossible to beat at home. They’re also near-impossible to beat in big games, reaching the Super Bowl for a third consecutive season.
The Bills also had plenty of mistakes of their own. They failed twice on two-point conversions. Needing a field goal to send the game to overtime, Allen was 1 of 4 on Buffalo’s final possession. But it’s also really hard to see the momentum the Bills had at that moment and not think the refs snatched it from them.
“Of course, it (matters). Darn right, it does,’ McDermott said. ‘That’s a possession. We’re up one point at the time. A chance to go up maybe multiple scores at that point. It’s a big call. It’s absolutely a big call.’
And really, whether that call made the difference in the outcome or not is beside the point.
The NFL is hypersensitive to anything that calls the integrity of the game into question. It’s why multiple players have gotten hefty suspensions for gambling. Yet there are an increasing number of fans who believe that the NFL is partial to Mahomes and the Chiefs and has let the refs know it. The thinking is that because Mahomes is the face of the league and because Travis Kelce’s romance with Taylor Swift has brought a legion of new fans to the NFL, it’s best for everyone that they end up on the winning side.
Every game, there is griping about the gifts the Chiefs get from the refs. Calls made in their favor. Calls made against their opponent. Penalties ignored. Penalties assessed. Even earlier in Sunday’s game, refs ruled Xavier Worthy made a 26-yard catch when replays showed possession was debatable. Two plays later, the Chiefs scored.
Electronic spotting won’t end all the suspicion. But when the NFL’s credibility is being called into question, even a partial solution is better than the status quo. The technology exists. The NFL has the money for it. All it needs is the motive, and this game sure provided it.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.