It took four games, but NFL fans finally got the chance to watch a closely contested playoff game. More than closely contested, the Dallas Cowboys - Detroit Lions Wild Card game Sunday afternoon featured intense controversy.
With only a few minutes remaining in the game, and with Detroit nursing a three-point lead, the officials called a defensive pass-interference penalty against the Cowboys on a critical third-down play.
However, instead of the flag standing, the officials picked it up in a highly controversial move. It forced the Lions to punt which lead to Tony Romo and Dallas driving for the game winning touchdown.
On Monday, the league apologized to the Lions and admitted their mistake.
According to CBS Sports, NFL vice president of officiating Dean Blandino had this to say about the controversial call on NFL Network: "You can debate whether it's pass interference."... "The defender, he's not playing the ball. That's the first thing the officials look for. That's not pass interference by itself. You can face guard in the NFL ... it's not a foul. Then we look to see (if) there was significant contact before the ball arrived that prevented Pettigrew from making the catch."
However, he did admit to David Florio of Pro Football Talk that it was a "close call that could have went either way, but (Anthony) Hitchens definitely committed defensive holding."
Basically, the play will go down as another one in the long line of controversial plays that fans have had to endure during playoff time. There's no way around it. As long as humans are officiating sports, human error needs to be expected and understood.