Mike McCarthy will not back down in defense of the play that blocked Dallas’ exit over the weekend.
The Cowboys head coach gave his season-ending press conference Wednesday and was steadfast in his decision to call that fateful quarter-final draw at the end of Dallas’ San Francisco loss to San Francisco in the round. wild card.
The Dallas head coach explained that the last play played was a “13-second threshold,” meaning the play had a maximum of 13 seconds in that position to be effective. The game clock has 14 seconds left in that position, which means the game was a success, at least according to the head coach.
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McCarthy has indicated that he will be making a gameplay change:
“The part that we have to talk about as an employee, and we had a chance to check with Dak about it, talk to Dak and run last night, is the mechanics. Our mechanics fit the bill. their mechanics (officials) I won’t engage with their mechanics.
“Regarding the draw, the execution, the only thing we talked about, Dak and I, put the pitch limit on it. Let’s cut it down to 10 yards. That could be the change, the adjustment. tweaks we make.”
McCarthy also explained that he believes the center maybe spot the ball during play, and says all the referee needs to do is touch the ball to a minimum – if the position is right.
The umpire touching the ball will indicate an OK position, so the umpire still needs to touch the ball before the start of play. To avoid a situation from happening (as Dallas doesn’t, and analyst Tony Romo is clamoring for), players hand the ball over to a referee to spot the ball before play begins.
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In defense of the Cowboys, former NFL Vice President at the trial of Dean Blandino explain that the umpire, who was somewhat late in the game, could have done a better job of monitoring the game, and less time would have been wasted on the spot.
Mike Pereira, current Fox rules analyst and former NFL executive vice president, says the mechanism for officials could be handled a little better.
NFL rules state that the referee must still touch the spotted ball before the start of the game (Rule 3, Section 2, Rule 2):
A dead ball is ready to play while the 40-second Game Timer is running when the ball is placed by the referee at the spot where the next ball will be played or when the Referee signals the Game 25 seconds to start.
The conversation may have been futile, though: Game logs indicate that Prescott completed the last shot and the spike ended the game, not timed out in the fourth quarter, which means The Cowboys had one last playthrough and chose to waste it on a branch instead of a cut in the field.
McCarthy said he hasn’t seen the “details” of the match, but made an exception to the highly controversial finale.
Don’t lose sleep, Cowboy fans.
