The NFL admitted on Tuesday that the controversial pass interference no-call may not have been the most important gift the Dallas Cowboys were given during their win over the Detroit Lions on Sunday. There was also a blatant hold on Ndamukong Suh that should have been called.
ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports that the NFL informed the Lions on Tuesday that Suh was held on the play where Tony Romo hooked up with Jason Witten on a fourth-down completion to keep Dallas’ eventual game-winning drive going. Had a flag been thrown, the Cowboys would have been faced with 4th-and-16 and punted. The Lions would have gotten the ball with the lead and less than six minutes remaining.
Schefter adds that one league source said the missed holding call was “even worse than the PI call/no call.”
The photo you see above that Zach Kruse passed along shows Suh clearly being held. We’ll let you decide if that was worse than what Anthony Hitchens did to Brandon Pettigrew, which you can watch here.
In reality, you could go through any NFL game and pick out plays where officials blatantly missed calls. The crew on Sunday just happened to miss more than one at crucial times in a close game.
As we mentioned before, Matthew Stafford could have made all of this irrelevant if he didn’t miss a wide-open Calvin Johnson late in the game. What’s done is done.
