Ex-NFL officials disagree on non-call to end Patriots-Panthers game

Longtime NFL official Gerry Austin defended the controversial decision to pick up a flag on the final play of Monday’s game between the Carolina Panthers and the New England Patriots.

Standing near the goal post, back judge Terrence Miles threw a flag for pass interference, and TV replays showed Panthers linebacker Luke Kuechly wrapping his arms around Gronkowski at roughly the same depth the underthrown ball was picked off.

But then Miles spoke with two other officials, and by the time referee Clete Blakeman made his way to the spot, Miles was shaking his head and saying “no,” wiping away the foul and giving the Panthers the victory.

Austin, a league official for more than two decades who serves as ESPN’s officiating expert, joined the broadcast moments after the play and said Kuechly’s contact was “a foul that’s in the making.

The contact is deemed permissible only if “the pass is clearly uncatchable by the involved players” a high threshhold Daopoulus said Monday’s play didn’t meet.

“We as officials have always been taught, for a ball to be uncatchable, it has to be clearly out of the field of play or it has to be a kind of I probably shouldn’t say this a Tim Tebow-type pass that lands 15 yards in front of you,” Daopoulus said.

“It was determined at that point in time that when the primary contact occurred on the tight end that the ball, in essence, was coming in underthrown and, in essence, it was immediate at that point intercepted at the front end of the end zone,” Blakeman said.

“So there was a determination that, in essence, uncatchability that the ball was intercepted at or about the same time the primary contact against the receiver occurred.” Daopoulus questioned why the other officials particularly DeFelice, whose primary assignment is at the line of scrimmage got involved when Miles had the clearest angle on the play.