Matt LaFleur furious officials missed intentional grounding penalty

Matt LaFleur was furious with the officiating crew for Sunday night’s Green Bay Packers-San Francisco 49ers game for missing a call that cost them points.

The 49ers went for it on a 3rd-and-goal from the 1 with two seconds left before halftime and scored on a Trey Lance touchdown run. That made the score 17-7 going into halftime.

But if the series had been called properly, it would have been 17-0.

On the play before the touchdown, Jimmy Garoppolo was pressured in the pocket on 2nd-and-goal from the one. Just as he was about to be sacked, he got rid of the ball. However, his pass did not reach the line of scrimmage, there was no eligible receiver around, and he was inside the tackle box. Take a look.

how this wasn't intentional grounding is anyone's guess pic.twitter.com/SdlHHT5cST

— packers clips (@packers_clips) September 27, 2021

The officials ruled it an incomplete pass.

There is one item to note.

If a passer begins his throwing motion towards an eligible receiver and physical contact alters the pass so that it lands nowhere near an eligible receiver, then grounding would not be called.

However, that pass sure looked to me like Garoppolo only got rid of it at the last second to avoid a sack, which would make it grounding.

Had intentional grounding been called, there would have been a 10-second runoff to end the half. The officials probably didn’t want to end things that way and called it incomplete instead.