It won’t change anything but — it was a catch. Dez Bryant went up and caught the well-thrown ball, brought it into his body, landed on his feet, took two steps and dove for the goal line. Despite what the officials ruled, that was a football move. When the hand holding the ball hit the ground the ball popped out but Dez immediately recovered the ball in the end zone. The ground can’t cause a fumble and he was down by contact when his knees touched the ground, about the same time as the ball popped loose. The Cowboys should have had a first down inside the five yard line.
Officials miss calls all the time. It’s a fast moving game and it’s impossible to catch everything but this call was different. It was first ruled a catch, then overruled after the officials watched instant replay. The replay should have enforced the ruling on the field. As a result of the officials overturning the ruling on the field, fans for both teams and the NFL itself were cheated. Let’s look at the likely scenarios if the call had stood.
The Cowboys have the ball inside the five yard line with four downs and over four minutes on the clock to punch it in. There is no guarantee they would have but let’s assume they did. Then what? Green Bay receives the ensuing kickoff with maybe three minutes or less on the clock. The Dallas defense has to keep the Packers out of field goal range since the Cowboys only lead by two. The Packers have to maintain possession of the ball and not turn it over on downs while moving into field goal range. The clock is moving but they have plenty of time with two timeouts and the two minute warning to stop the clock. Fans of both teams are holding their breaths. If the Green Bay quarterback moves his team and scores at least a field goal, there is probably less than a minute on the clock and it would require a miracle for Dallas to receive the kickoff and score to win the game. If the Dallas defense holds, Dallas runs out the clock and it’s game over.
If the Cowboys don’t get it in the end zone and Green Bay takes over on downs pinned against their own goal line, they will have to make a couple of first downs to keep from giving the ball back to Dallas. If the Cowboys get the ball back, there probably won’t be much time on the clock, but there might be enough, We’ll never know.
Instead of a thrilling end to a hard-fought ball game, though, we have — meh, because the officials couldn’t err on the side of letting the players decide the outcome of the game.