If you were watching the AFC Championship Game between the New England Patriots and Denver Broncos and felt confused for a moment, you weren’t alone. A bizarre officiating mistake wiped a defensive touchdown off the board, even though the play itself was ruled correctly after review.
Early in the game, with Denver holding a 7–0 lead, Broncos quarterback Jarrett Stidham found himself under heavy pressure. In a panic, he flung a two-handed pass backward in what looked more like a rugby play than an NFL throw. Patriots linebacker Elijah Ponder scooped it up and rumbled 12 yards for what should have been an easy defensive touchdown.
Initially, officials ruled the play a forward pass and called intentional grounding. After a quick huddle, referee Alex Kemp announced the crew had determined it was actually a backward pass, which would make it a live ball and a clear Patriots touchdown.
So… why didn’t it count?
Because the whistle had already blown.
The play was stopped in real time because the officials originally misread the throw as a forward pass. Once that happens, the play is dead — even if replay later shows the ball was clearly going backward. In other words, the refs got the call right after discussion, but too late to fix the damage caused by the premature whistle.
The smarter move would have been to let the play continue and sort it out with replay afterward. If it turned out to be a forward pass, fine — bring it back. But by killing the play early, the officials took a touchdown away that replay could not restore.
In the grand scheme, it didn’t change the scoreboard for long. New England marched down the field on the short field and punched in a touchdown anyway. Still, it was an avoidable mistake, and one that wasn’t explained nearly well enough on the broadcast.
For casual fans — and there were plenty tuning in for the AFC title game — the sequence made little sense. A touchdown happened, then didn’t, then kind of did. Without a clear breakdown of the whistle, the backward-pass rule, and replay limitations, it all felt unnecessarily messy for a moment that should have been straightforward.
The Patriots survived the confusion. The officiating crew, however, will likely be hearing about it in the league’s postgame review.
One Response
I don’t think quarterback Stidham “flung a two-handed pass backward.” Rather, it looked to me that the defender redirected the ball backward. BTW, I am a Bears fan.