New Orleans Saints Again Robbed By NFL Referees

The New Orleans Saints are again getting robbed by officials in the Superdome. During their season-opener against the Houston Texans, the stakes were a little lower, but near the end of the 1st half the referees appeared to steal about 15-seconds from the Saints. FOX rules analyst Mike Pereira pointed out the error and was backed up most of Twitter.

Unless I am crazy, they really mishandled the replay. They should have reset the clock to 41 seconds and then run 10 seconds down to 31. That took 15 seconds away from the Saints.

— Mike Pereira (@MikePereira) September 10, 2019

Here’s video.

So, somehow instead of #Saints having :30+ secs on the clock on what would have been a correct first down call, the officials screw it up and then because of their error, :10 sec runoff and end up with :16. How does this make any sense @nfl pic.twitter.com/yggaQTfsLG

— Keith Britton (@KeithBritton86) September 10, 2019

Drew Brees dropped back to pass with 0:48 remaining in the 2nd quarter. He completed a pass to Michael Thomas near the sideline and the referee ruled that Thomas was down in bounds around the 0:42-mark so the clock continued to run. The Saints elected not to use a timeout and the replay official reviewed the spot and there was a 10-second run-off.

Except the run-off probably should have been from around 0:41. Instead the clock was wound down to 0:16, the Saints used a timeout with 0:04 remaining and settled for a missed field goal attempt.