The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Falcons beat writer D. Orlando Ledbetter, who was the Professional Football Writers of America pool reporter for Saturday’s game at the Ravens, conducted an interview with referee Bill Vinovich and NFL Senior Vice President of Officiating Walt Anderson after the game about two critical plays in the game. Here is the interview:
Question: We wanted to explore why the intentional grounding was called late in the second quarter?
Vinovich: Basically he’s out of the pocket, has to get the ball back to the line of scrimmage. It’s a judgment call whether the contact affected the throw significantly enough to take off the intentional grounding.
Q: Did you feel like it was not significant enough then, the contact that was made with Falcons quarterback Desmond Ridder to call that?
Vinovich: Correct.
Q: Why not?
Vinovich: Because he would have had to get the ball all the way back to the 1-yard line. In my opinion, he was just dumping the ball to save yardage.
Q: Why did the clock run after the penalty?
Vinovich: It is inside of two minutes, so a penalty by the offense that stops the clock gets a 10-second runoff and then we’re going to wind the clock.
Q: Wanted to check with you on the review of the non-catch catch in the third quarter. What did you all see on replay review?
Anderson: We started with the ruling on the field, which was an incomplete pass. What we wanted to do is to look at all of the aspects of the catch process. What we saw was that as the receiver is going to the ground, he initially possesses the ball, but then he lost control as he first went to the ground, when he was on his back. And now, the ball was loose on his belly as he rolled over, but before he could regain control, the point of the ball ended up touching the ground. That’s what makes it incomplete, and that’s why the on-field ruling of an incomplete pass stands.
Q: OK, well I certainly appreciate it. That’s very clear for us. I appreciate your time. We didn’t see that. The ball tips the ground. I guess we can’t really see that in the press box.
Anderson: What we ended up using, I think the first shot was from kind of behind the offense at ground level. When he first goes to the ground is when the ball comes loose. The shot of the ball tipping the ground would have come from the right corner, from the defensive side. That was the camera view that we used, and we actually have TV using an enhanced view of that as well, so you could see very, very clearly that the point of the ball hit the ground before he regained control of it.
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Atlanta Falcons 2022 schedule
Sept. 11: Saints 27, Falcons 26
Sept. 18: Rams 31, Falcons 27
Sept. 25 Falcons 27, Seahawks 23
Oct. 2 Falcons 23, Browns 20
Oct. 9 Buccaneers 21, Falcons 15
Oct. 16 Falcons 28, 49ers 14
Oct. 23 Bengals 35, Falcons 17
Oct. 30 Falcons 37, Panthers 34 OT
Nov. 6 Chargers 20, Falcons 17
Nov. 10 Panthers 25, Falcons 15
Nov. 20 Falcons 27, Bears 24
Nov. 27 Commanders 19, Falcons 13
Dec. 4 Steelers 19, Falcons 16
BYE WEEK
Dec. 18 Saints 21, Falcons 18
Dec. 24 at Baltimore, 1 p.m.
Jan. 1 vs. Arizona, 1 p.m.
Jan. 8 vs. Tampa Bay, TBD
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