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Baltimore Ravens Burned by Officiating, Post A Story On Their Website About It

Amazing that we've been playing NFL football since 1920 and this is the first time something like this has ever happened.

Well, this is a new one. It seems the Baltimore Ravens might have had a good chance at beating the Arizona Cardinals in Phoenix last night, but a couple of calls during the game went against them and they lost. I've watched a lot of sports in my day and I've never seen anything like it before. You could make the argument that had some of these bad calls not been made, the Ravens might have actually won! Except for those bad calls, that is. Man, this is terrible. As the first team to have ever gotten boned by bad officiating, someone should do something. Maybe they should put up a crybaby blog post on their website detailing specifically how the referees ruined everything for them. Oh they did? Good!

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Let's start with the most glaring issue, that weird sequence where John Urschel was flagged for illegal formation on a trick play even though he clearly reported to refereee Ron Tolbert as eligible.

By the way… What more does an OL have to do to report? Look at Urschel. pic.twitter.com/OP9ZxDtjX3
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) October 27, 2015

As you can see, he obviously reported as eligible. Somehow, the referees missed it and negated the six-yard play. For the first time since the inaugural season in 1920 a referee missed a call in a football game. If the Ravens are looking for a silver lining, at least it happened in 2015 when someone from their official website could blog about it.

"John did everything he's supposed to do in this situation, just as he's coached," Harbaugh said. "Joe looked at it, he saw it, I saw it. Then there was an announcement; you couldn't hear what the announcement was because you never can."

The Ravens had to settle for a field goal on that drive. That's possibly four points stolen right from them! Blargh!

Later in the game, referees did not rule Chris Johnson as being down after running for a short gain. Ravens defensive lineman Brandon Williams felt he stopped Johnson's forward progress and therefore let go of him while the running back was sitting on his tummy. Johnson scooted away for what would be a 62-yard gain. AND A TRAVESTY!

The forward progress was stopped," Harbaugh said. "If you hit him in that situation, then you're going to get fined and stopped. For three seconds it was stopped. He had called himself down and was sitting there. We shouldn't hit him; it would have been a dangerous play."

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Quoth the Ravens: "It's unclear whether a whistle was blown." The Cardinals got a field goal on the drive—three points they maybe wouldn't have gotten but for a questionable call that went against them.

Now I'm just going to quote the baltimoreravens.com staff writer on this final miscarriage of justice: "Another borderline call led to a Cardinals touchdown." It seems Jeremy Ross fumbled a punt and the Cardinals recovered. Since it was a turnover, it was automatically reviewed. Due to a lack of incontrovertible visual evidence, the call on the field stood.

Fumble on the field, call stood. About as close as it can get. pic.twitter.com/kZGWKsJ40g
— Chris Burke (@ChrisBurke_SI) October 27, 2015

That is pretty close. It's a tough call made even worse because no other team has ever had a call like this go against them. A fumble that maybe wasn't because video showed his knee maybe microscopically went down nanoseconds before the ball popped out? What are the odds?! What a bummer for the poor Ravens.

[Ravens, seriously]