The problem is these refs just guessed but the conclusive evidence BS makes that orginal call where they just guessed so important. It was conclusive anyway btw but lets say it was less conclusive. Why are we relying on needing overwhelming evidence to overturn a guess by the refs vs looking at the video and saying Im 90% sure it wasnt a catch. Makes no sense.
Yeah, overhwelming evidence to overturn something that they guessed at to begin with is sorta overkill (I mean really, NOBODY knew for sure if he had control live). One ref put his arms up somewhat quickly, but there was definitely a "think about it" delay.
Maybe because the review for a close call is automatic on a TD, it's better to err on the side of calling it a TD and then taking a look on replay, so a team doesn't have to waste a timeout. But then they should have some additional leeway to overturn in that case.
The league would be better off if they just allowed upstairs video review to take a look at plays in real-time and have the authority to buzz the head ref for a brief pause in the action. Bogar stared at that thing for a long time, over and over. Even in the stadium, you could see his facial expressions on the jumbotron while he was watching it... I knew he was going to go the "stands as called" route when he walked away. His face basically said "Man, this is close. I think it hits the ground but I don't know 100% for sure, so I gotta let it stand". And even in the stadium, they're showing slow mo but not "freeze framing" on the key moment. I'm 100% sure Bogar NEVER got a still shot of the picture I posted... which came from the NBC broadcast... which is part of what the review makes available. THAT is another big problem. People don't know how to use the video to get the right shot sometimes.
Same thing happened in a game in Cleveland years ago, the Browns scored a TD on a similar catch / trap (like Andrews diving forward TD but much less secure) where you could easily slo-mo and pause the GamePass video to clearly show the ball hitting the ground first between his hands. Or the '08 season playoff game at TEN, you could GamePass slo-mo / pause a very clear shot of Chris Johnson being tackled, knee down in the endzone, ball still not OUT of the endzone, should have been a safety but they never saw THAT picture.
We shouldn't be able to find a conclusive picture using NFL GamePass video with a minute or less of effort... but the league, with cameras all over the place and a command post / super powered video processing center broadcast crew on site. Has to be a way to give the officials making critical calls the BEST possible pictures, and do it fast.
I know I'm totally overkilling this... but the league's bad replay system is a never-ending pet peeve / obsession of mine...