18 seconds

All the stories seem to be that the Steelers winning minimizes the goofy 18 second clock issue, but shouldn't the Chargers be mad - they would have had 18 seconds to try a comeback, and with our tired defense, may have had a shot. I haven't heard anything from their side.

 

Thomas also was never touched when he recovered that fumble. The officiating is a complete joke.

 

The NFL handles the game clock.
They also took care of the headsets for the NE game.
Since there couldn't have been any NE tampering in that game, obviously there was no clock problem last night.

 

With Jacoby Jones on their roster.... I'm surprised they aren't screaming foul.... he can run the length of the field against our special teams unit in less than 18 seconds.... he's done it before against us. I'd say the NFL is really suffering with some credibility issues. Come on man

 

He wont do it if Tomlin is on the field though lol

 

Another league blunder but you have to question both sides for not realizing it.

 

I'm pretty sure the game clock is handled by the home team. I believe the side judge is responsible for keeping an eye on it and making sure it runs correctly, but any official could have noticed the error and made a call.

 

"NFL clock operators are hired by the NFL..."
(The article on NFL.com mentions it is usually a local person, except for the playoffs.)
The side judge (or any of the other officials) has the final responsibility, yes.

 

The refs also were blowing the whistle too early on a few of Bell running plays.

 

Yea, there was one play where Bell made contact and instantly the whistle was blown and he wasn't even close to going down. I told the wife that the ref probably is playing against him on his FF team.

 

Officiating is a joke, but I doubt the 18 sec had any real impact that far out from the end of the game. The 2 minute warning hit at the end of a run play but would have kept running had it been 2:18. It would have continued to run to either a timeout or a quick spike which wasn't going to happen at that point anyway.

 

Not to be sexist but I think on like two of those calls the new woman ref in that game was the one blowing the whistle too early.

 

If not mistaken, I believe her name is Monica.

 

I noticed that. Fumble recoveries are always a bit of a blind spot in the rules, I think - I didn't see a replay on this occasion, though.

 

I was thinking the same thing. By rule if there is a flag on the ground the clock should stop immediately after the play.

 

the difference between a try for the TD and if stopped a tying field goal just saying.

 

Well I think that gaffe should have cost the steelers the game. There's no way they expected us to be near the goal line with seconds left. So if there was any foul play it was intended to screw the steelers.

 

In a bang bang play like that, since they didn't rule it a fumble right away they almost always rule the play as over when possession changes and not when a player is touched. Very rarely have I ever seen them allow the play to continue and a TD to be scored. although Thomas did the right thing by running it into the endzone because you never know.

 

I don't think those 18 seconds mattered as i don't think there was any intent on throwing the ball before the 2 minute warning. They ran it twice, perhaps they would have gotten a 3rd in....who knows...

 

Just think if they did have 18 more seconds, they could have huddled up one more time

 

But what I'm saying is that 18 sec would have disappeared anyway unless they call for a timeout. They ran a running play with 2:05 remaining and the clock stopped at 2 mins which was also the conclusion of that run play. Had there been 2:18 left I doubt there would have been enough time to run another play without taking a timeout or spiking it.

 

And I believe SD was out of timeouts. Doubt very highly that they could have scored a TD with 18 secs and no TO's.

 

I went back and re-watched, I thought Miller was down about 0:08 left but you didn't see a flag fly until 0:06 left, so realistically you only lost 1 second to stop the timer after the flag was thrown.... Not blatantly obvious like running the clock after a touchback.