By Bill Bradley, contributing editor
NFL vice president of officiating Dean Blandino said Tuesday that while it appears that Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown got his feet inbounds for a touchdown catch Monday night against the Houston Texans, the video told another story.
After the game, Brown waved his phone with a Twitter photo that seemed to show him getting his second foot inbounds on the disputed second-half play.
"When you look at these plays, it's hard to take a still shot and have that be definitive evidence," Blandino said his weekly "Official Review" segment on "NFL Total Access." "When we look at this play, I can freeze it on the video at that point, and it looks like the foot is in, but the foot's not down yet.
"Now when we take it a couple of frames forward, you can see the foot up against the white. So you gotta be really careful with still frames and photos and making calls like this. I'll show you one other look from behind the play where you can watch the foot being out of bounds there, and then when it comes up, you'll see clearly, in the white, that's an incomplete pass."
Blandino said the definitive angle was Brown's pink shoe in the white area of the sideline paint.
"There was no green between the foot and the sideline.
Blandino also discussed running back Tre Mason's forward fumble late in the St. Louis Rams' victory over the Seattle Seahawks. The ball appeared to settle under Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman, but St. Louis was given possession.
Blandino said the play had two prongs. First, it was clearly a fumble and Mason was not ruled down by contact.
As for possession, he said the issue is how officials determine a fumble recovery on the field vs. on replay.
"On the field, you're going to look for possession before it goes into the pile," he said. "... Now the officials have go in and dig and find who has the ball.
"They went in. They found a St. Louis player with the football. That's why they ruled St. Louis' ball. Now when you look at it in replay, you have to have clear evidence of a clear recovery. That means the player actually possessing the ball before it goes into the pile."
"This was looked at. The replay official (on site) looked at it. And we looked at it in New York. We could not determine whether Sherman actually had it. ... He has to have it with his hands."
