Morning Rewind, 10/6: Seahawks swat away Detroit on Monday Night

Updated
Pereira: Officials Missed Illegal Bat, Lions Should Have Kept Possession
Pereira: Officials Missed Illegal Bat, Lions Should Have Kept Possession



Some NFL rules have been in place for years -- some are brand new. Some help the game go along cleanly, while some reinforce player safety. But some rules are so arcane that you cannot truly reason why they take up space in the rule book.

Sometimes, even the referees forget about these. Like during the final minutes of last night's Monday Night matchup between the Detroit Lions and Seattle Seahawks.

In the same exact end zone that NFL replacement referees botched the famous "Fail Mary" call in 2012, mayhem struck again when Seattle broke the ball free from Calvin Johnson's possession near the one-yard line, with a Lions touchdown seemingly inevitable. As the ball trickled toward the back of the end zone, linebacker K.J. Wright chased it down, swatted it out of play with his hand, and the play was dead -- and the score was decided.

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No flags were thrown, because it read like a clean football play -- a wacky, unexpected one for sure, but within football's rules. Except for one thing: It wasn't.

Wright should have been called for an "illegal bat" when he intentionally swatted the ball out of the end zone for a touchback, said NFL VP of officiating Dean Blandino. But there was no call, and the Lions walked away a loser.

Wright all but admitted that he should've been flagged after the game:

%shareLinks-quote="You can't hit it backward, and you can't intentionally, I guess, knock it out. But at the time, I wasn't thinking that. I was just trying to not mess up the game. So I know now."" type="quote" author="K.J. Wright" authordesc="Seahawks LB" isquoteoftheday="false"%

It was an inauspicious ending to an overwhelmingly uneventful game in primetime. Neither team had a rusher that accumulated more than 48 yards and there was one passing touchdown: from Russell Wilson to Doug Baldwin.

Fair or not, the Lions now sink to an almost insurmountable 0-4, while the Seahawks even up their standing at 2-2 after getting off the a crawling start. And if they have their eyes set on a third-straight Super Bowl appearance, a little luck like this is exactly what they'll need.

Seahawks 13, Lions 10

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