By popular demand, we’re again going to have a post after each game that breaks down some of the controversial decisions from the officiating crew in the game.
Penalty Count
Bills 7-60 (leading to two Jets first downs)
Jets 16-120 (leading to six Bills first downs)
Note: This does not include penalties that are declined or off-set.
Plays where the call was obvious, uncontroversial or not visible on broadcast footage
Jets Penalties
- Illegal contact on Tony Adams. Clear grab to impede his man from moving more than five yards downfield.
- Pass interference on Sauce Gardner in the end zone. Clearly grabbed his man, even though he was appealing for a push-off.
- Offensive holding on John Simpson to negate an 18-yard run by Breece Hall. Pulled down a run-blitzing Matt Milano by the shoulder pad.
- Allen Lazard offensive holding to negate a first down run. Very clearly grabbed Rasul Douglas and pulled him around.
- Delay of game on 4th-and-5. Looked like the Jets had no intention of going for this and were just hoping someone would jump offside.
- Simpson false start. Reacted to a Bills’ lineman being fooled by the hard count but that lineman wasn’t in the neutral zone as Simpson moved.
- Aaron Rodgers late hit out of bounds. Reasonable call as he shoved Christian Benford while he was already in the white following his second interception.
- Jeremy Ruckert illegal block in the back to negate Xavier Gipson’s 46 yard kickoff return. This seemed unnecessary from Ruckert but looked like a correct call.
- Jarius Monroe ran out of bounds on a punt. Monroe showed his inexperience here as he allowed his man to leverage him into the sideline and didn’t immediately try to get back inbounds.
- Reed illegal hands to the face and Williams roughing the passer. Reed’s penalty was declined anyway but was similar to the first one where any contact to the head area looked incidental at most. Williams shoved Allen well after the play and wanted a flop but that was probably a case of him not knowing his own strength.
- Solomon Thomas roughing the passer. Thomas pursued Allen across the field and he ran into him as they were both upright so their helmets collided which is called every time unless it’s Zach Wilson. Allen threw a touchdown anyway.
Bills Penalties
- Illegal contact on Douglas. This occurred off-screen as he was covering Garrett Wilson.
- Illegal man downfield on David Edwards. Clearly 3-4 yards downfield before the ball was thrown as the timing was thrown off. The Jets declined this to make it 3rd-and-9 rather than 2nd-and-14.
- Amari Cooper offensive pass interference. As clear of a push-off as you could ever see on Brandin Echols.
- Illegal contact on Cole Bishop against Davante Adams. Very clear grab down the field although the officials seemed reluctant to throw this until Adams politicked for it and the flag came in late.
Penalties warranting further discussion or explanation
Jets Penalties
- DJ Reed illegal hands to the face. This looked like a soft call. Reed made contact with his man’s chest as he jammed him. If there was any contact at all to the helmet, facemask or chin strap, it was minimal.
- False start on Tyler Conklin. On this play, Kenny Yeboah flinched but tried to play it off like he was leaning in to hear the quarterback. Then there was a delay of a few seconds during which nobody moved but the Bills appealed for a flag, which was thrown late and attributed to Conklin.
- Will McDonald lined up offside and then was called for roughing the passer. McDonald was definitely offside, as he lined up level with the ball, a mistake he made a lot earlier in the season but not recently. The roughing call was inevitable but he shoved Allen in the chest and there was helmet to helmet contact only because Allen stayed upright so their helmets made incidental contact. This penalty was actually called on the wrong number because it was announced as on 95 but Quinnen Williams didn’t get to Allen.
- Unnecessary roughness on Micheal Clemons. Cartoonishly jumped on top of a pile as a play was being blown dead. A good call because it was the definition of unnecessary and awful discipline from Clemons once more. It was funny though.
- Marcelino McCrary-Ball apparently lined up in the wrong place or moved early on a kickoff to draw an illegal formation penalty although this wasn’t clear from broadcast footage. This was the Jets’ 16th penalty with 12:37 still remaining but mercifully the officials put their whistles away after that one.
Bills Penalties
- Connor McGovern personal foul. Knocked McDonald flying after an argument between Spencer Brown and McDonald, which Brown started and McDonald reacted to. The officials ignored Alec Anderson throwing a punch for which he should have been ejected.
- Brown offensive holding on McDonald. This was difficult to see from the angles on the broadcast but he did reach around McDonald’s waist after McDonald used a rip move to try and go around the corner and the official would have been in prime position to see if there was a grab.
- Ray Davis offensive holding on McDonald. McDonald blew by Anderson (who sucks) and the running back Davis had to basically tackle him around the chest to prevent a sack.
- False start on both Khalil Shakir and O’Cyrus Torrence. This just looked like the center snapped the ball too late.
- The cry-baby Anderson was called for an illegal formation and protested to the refs that it wasn’t true that he didn’t report as ineligible. It looked like Dion Dawkins reported as eligible instead, then lined up in the slot. All this stuff about eligible/ineligible, who reported and whether or not an eligible receiver was covered up on the line is totally irrelevant though because the Bills had eight players on the line of scrimmage which isn’t legal. It was probably Dawkins’ fault but it got attributed to Anderson.
Notable no-calls etc
Here were some of the other notable missed calls, replay situations and controversial moments:
- Jamien Sherwood ripped the ball out from a Bills ball carrier but it was after the whistle.
- Anderson blatantly got away with holding McDonald after pulling to the right and then got into it with him after the play. Dirtiest player we’ve seen all season with a laughably unearned sense of entitlement.
- On the play where Gardner was called for pass interference it looked like there may also have been a flag for roughing the passer which replay assist told them not to announce because they could see that Thomas’ hit was clean.
- Anderson jumped on top of Clemons after a one-yard touchdown and was clearly taunting, but Clemons took the bait and retaliated so the officials just ignored it. Pathetic cowardice from Anderson, who hasn’t started a game all year.
- An illegal man downfield penalty on the Jets was picked up and correctly so as Joe Tippmann held up before going too far downfield.
- Simpson and Jordan Phillips also got into a post-play altercation.
- Wilson’s knee was down with the ball a half-yard short of the marker and this was correctly spotted.
- Conklin was also correctly ruled down just shy of the marker.
- Dawkins held Eric Watts blatantly on the edge. He was only using one hand to block him but that hand had a handful of Watts’ jersey near the neck area.
- The officials picked up a a flag on the Jets on a punt return. Echols was originally flagged for a block in the back but replay assist communicated that the block was actually into the player’s side.
- Davante Adams blatantly had a first down by about a yard but was marked a yard short.
- Allen did manage to get rid of the ball before his knee hit as Haason Reddick chased him out of the pocket but his flip was nowhere near the eligible receiver he claimed was in the area and you’d usually expect an intentional grounding call on such a play.
- The Bills wanted a flag on Reed as their receiver slipped but the replay showed that Reed effectively jammed him up to the five yard point and then didn’t make any contact beyond that.
- James Cook was clearly down at the one-yard line before the ball slipped loose and rolled through the end zone.
- On Wilson’s fumble, his knee was down but without any contact from a defender and then he lifted his knee off the turf before Ed Oliver knocked the ball loose.
- Milano was making contact with Rodgers as he picked up the Wilson fumble before rolling away and running it in, so the touchdown was correctly overturned.
Let us know what we missed – or misinterpreted – in the comments…