I Want Goodell To Turn The Machines Back On To Replay The Last 1:46 Of The Saints-Rams Game So Bad
(PFT) – Consider Rule 17, Section 2, Article 1: “The Commissioner has the sole authority to investigate and take appropriate disciplinary and/or corrective measures if any club action, non-participant interference, or calamity occurs in an NFL game which the Commissioner deems so extraordinarily unfair or outside the accepted tactics encountered in professional football that such action has a major effect on the result of the game.”
And here’s where it gets even juicier. Consider Rule 17, Section 2, Article 3: “The Commissioner’s powers under this Section 2 include . . . the reversal of a game’s result or the rescheduling of a game, either from the beginning or from the point at which the extraordinary act occurred.”
By now everyone knows that Goodell has the power to turn the machines back on and have these two teams retake the field and play out the remaining 1:46 of the game. Saints fans are suing, Michael Thomas wont stop talking about it, Sports Books are refunding Saints bets, Sean Payton probably cried several times since Sunday night. Saints players, fans, the entire state of New Orleans, Emeril, they will never get over this grave injustice they feel they have suffered at the hands of the League.
And I don’t give a shit about any of that. But what I do deeply give a shit about is the absolute chaos that would unfold if these teams had to replay the end of this game. Forcing the Rams back on a plane to fly back to New Orleans, warm up, stretch, get mentally ready to play a little less than two minutes of football over a game that has been decided is textbook chaos. Would they allow fans back in? Is the Whistle Monsta too depressed to rally the troops and give another A+ whistling performance? Could the Saints even score a single point right now from the one yard line or are they so mentally inside their own heads that they’d fumble the first snap, Aaron Donald runs it back and the Saints somehow lose by much worse. Or the Saints actually win this time, prompting Aqib Talib to go on that crime spree Ray Lewis was warning us about if the NFL were to ever lock out. It would be the most gripping football game of all time. Something that would be written into the history books for all of eternity.
While I mostly want this for the ensuing chaos, there’s a large part of me that has always been a stickler for the rules. And there is a clear as day rule in place here for exactly this situation. If the NFL isn’t going to use it in this instance they should be forced to take it out of the books forever. Sure, you could argue that Drew Brees shouldn’t have thrown that interception in overtime. That the Saints still had plenty of chances to win this game in real time. But I, as a jackass, could also argue this no-call changed the Saints mentality. The League already has a history of being against them and this infiltrated their brains to knock them off their stride enough to gift the Rams an undeserved victory.
Do the right thing and restart the machines, Goodell. Call the penalties, put the clock at exactly 1:46, same timeouts, same everything and let’s see what happens. Especially since, as a Patriots fan, this would completely fuck over whoever finally does win this game as they’d have almost no time to prepare for the Super Bowl.