After Further Review: Denver Broncos vs Baltimore Ravens

In the Denver Broncos 41-10 loss to the Baltimore Ravens there were 15 accepted penalties and one challenge. Anyone watching this game could see that the officials played an inconsistent and big role in the outcome of the game.

What's a Personal Foul? The inconsistencies in personal fouls in this game frustrated me. Baron Browning was called for tripping (a personal foul) for an effort that after replay its not clear had any intention, and definitely had no impact. Kediron Smith was called for a personal foul for driving a Raven to the ground out of bounds, a level of roughness that certainly had no football motive and was obviously a good call. But when Tavius Robinson sacked Bo Nix by smashing his arm into Nix's helmet, that was not a personal foul. Neither the rulebook nor reason would defend the application of personal foul penalties in this contest.

Fast Officiating Often, too much is made of fast administration of football games. This is because officials moving fast and keeping the game going is a good proxy for lots of important traits. Officials who have obsessively memorized the rulebook, mechanics, definitions, and scenarios are able to do things extremely quickly, while also being right. The quick part improves viewer experience, which matters. But more importantly, often being fast is a very good proxy for being consistently correct. This game presented an interesting contrast, because the officials and especially Referee Adrian Hill, were very slow. There were three extremely long delays during the game: to re-spot the ball near the end of the game when Bo Nix went out of bounds, to re-spot the ball on a penalty at the end of a run which resulted in moving it from first and 10 at the 25 to first and 10 and the 24.5 yard lines, and for the double foul on the Baltimore punt that led to a re-kick. These in total added about five minutes to the broadcast, and the total impact was extremely low. This was decidedly unimpressive.

Spotting the Ball Every week I mention how the officials spot the ball. Its an important and underrated skill, and it was also the first officiating skill I got great at, so its easy for me to judge. Consistency is the most important part of spotting well, though accuracy is a close second. This game was reasonably accurate, but not consistent. Especially in high impact situations, Down Judge David Oliver and Line judge Greg Bradley had great spots. The problem was that in lower impact situations, they consistently spotted the ball short. Denver's first turnover on downs was a series of plays where they spotted the ball over a yard shy on the first down run, a yard shy on second down pass, and had good spots on both third and fourth down. The result should have been a first down after the second down completion, or certainly a conversion on 4th down, but the failures in low leverage situations followed by accurate spots in resulting high leverage situations cost the Broncos a valuable early drive. There was also inconsistency through the game with where Umpire Roy Ellison spotted the ball in relation to the marked positions from the short wing officials. These problems can happen, but its usual to see things like this in the pre-season, not in week 9 because they are the things that crew should iron out early.

Official Evaluation I charted five bad calls and eight questionable calls in the game. One questionable call, and one bad call benefited Denver (the bad call was challenged and overturned) and the rest of the them benefited Baltimore. This was simply a lopsided and poorly officiated game. These included some pretty high impact calls, ultimately costing Denver at least two possessions. The best that can be said is that at least it was probably not dispositive to the outcome of the game.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments or to send me an email. While I rarely make unsolicited comments on non-Broncos games, if you have any rules questions from other games I am happy to either reply in the comments or if the matter is of enough concern in next weeks column.