What the Hell Happened on That Batted Ball Play that Saved the Seahawks?

The Seahawks won a controversial game against the Lions last night thanks to a no-call on a rarely seen penalty on the Seahawks defense. Trailing 13-10 with less than two minutes left, Calvin Johnson and the Lions looked like they were about to steal a win from Seattle, but then Kam Chancellor made a game-saving play to knock the ball out of Johnson's hand at the six-inch line. The ball bounced into the end zone and was helped out of bounds by K.J. Wright's hand, right in front of an official. Watching it in real time, you probably noticed the play by Wright but thought nothing of it. After the game, however, we learned that the officials missed a pretty big call.

Technically what Wright did was a penalty. If the football had simply hit him and gone out, it wouldn't have been a penalty, but he pretty clearly helped the ball along on its way out. There were two Lions players who had an outside shot at recovering the ball had Wright not slapped it out, or failed to control it himself.

Here's the rule that states Seattle illegally batted the ball and Detroit should have had 1st-and-goal. pic.twitter.com/GS3DVVfr4L
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) October 6, 2015

If you were watching SportsCenter after the game, Steve Young and Trent Dilfer were still a little bemused by the everything because they'd often seen punters push the ball out of the end zone and this never came up. FOX's Mike Pereira noted that since the spot of the foul happens in the end zone it's an automatic safety. As a defense, you can't get a safety in your own end zone, so the foul would be enforced from where possession was last and that would be with the Lions right before Chancellor hit the ball out of Johnson's hand.

NFL vice president of officiating Dean Blandino said the referees blew the call, straight up. Tony Corrente, the referee, did not see the play, but obviously the back judge, Greg Wilson, had a front row seat and saw the whole thing. The crew did debate the call but Wilson felt it was "not an intentional act, that it was inadvertent," and held on to his flag. As this happened in real time, I completely understand this. It almost looked like Wright thought about batting it out, and then at the last second realized maybe he shouldn't do that. It was a weird movement: he justsort of stuck his hand in a spot in the air and let the ball bounce off it, rather than really hit it out. Taking everything into account—that the ball was probably going out anyway, that Wright was right there and the closest Lions were yards away—it's totally possible that the back judge gave him the benefit of the doubt. He shouldn't have—and Wright later said he did intend to push it out—but that doesn't do much for Detroit now.

As a Seahawks fan, I would be waiting for the other shoe to drop. They have been on the winning end on some of the craziest end-of-game scenarios* we've seen the last few years and it's little over three years since they got another huge break on a blown officiating call. In the same end zone, on the same Monday Night Football stage, referees botched the call on a Seahawks Hail Mary attempt and we all learned about "simultaneous possession."

As a Lions fan, though, I would be screaming bloody murder. As lucky as the Seahawks have been with officiating, the Lions have been at the receiving end of some of the worst, hardest luck calls I can remember. I'm not sure if this rises to the level of what has since called the Calvin Johnson Rule, but it's just as inexplicable.

*Super Bowl doesn't count, Seattle. That was your own fault.