Detroit Lions' Rod Wood to NFL exec: 'I asked if he prayed for better officiating'

ORLANDO — Detroit Lions president Rod Wood was so mad after his team's controversial loss to the Dallas Cowboys in December that he asked NFL executive Troy Vincent if he "prayed for better officiating."

Wood made that admission on Day 1 of the NFL's annual meeting Monday, when he explained the process he went through of contacting the league to complain about a call that eventually cost the Lions a chance to host the NFC championship game.

"In terms of the process, you’re really not allowed to talk to the league until 9 a.m. the day following the game," Wood said. "So I sent a text to (NFL executive vice president of football operations) Troy Vincent and said I’ll be calling you at 9 a.m., you know what the topic is. And I called him at 9 a.m. He was in church, so he called me back at 10, and I asked if he prayed for better officiating. Which he said he always does."

MORE FROM WOOD: Lions spoke to Cam Sutton, advised him 'to turn himself in'

The Lions lost a Week 17 game to the Dallas Cowboys, 20-19, after officials nullified their go-ahead 2-point conversion with 23 seconds to play on an illegal touching penalty.

Left tackle Taylor Decker caught the go-ahead pass, but referee Brad Allen incorrectly announced sixth lineman Dan Skipper as the eligible receiver on the play after Skipper ran in from the sideline, in Allen's direction, while making a hand gesture near his body.

Skipper said he was signaling in the Lions' personnel package. Linemen often swipe down on their jerseys as part of the reporting process as eligible.

The Lions failed on two subsequent 2-point tries, then failed to recover the ensuing onside kick.

They finished the regular season 12-5, in a three-way tie for the NFC's best record, but lost the tiebreaker to the San Francisco 49ers and were the 2-seed in the playoffs. The top-seeded 49ers beat the Lions in the NFC championship game at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California.

"There was a legitimate difference of opinion as to who said what and who heard what," Wood said. "And so the resolution is really that you log your complaint and they promise to do better. There’s really nothing you can do to change it, but I didn’t want Dan (Campbell) or anybody else to have to worry about it. They got another game to get ready for. It would have been nice to have had a chance to see if we could win that game. The 2-point play didn’t win the game. They still had (23) seconds. They had a timeout, they could have kicked a field goal, but it would have been nice to see if we could have stopped them because we might have been playing San Francisco in Detroit for the chance to go to the Super Bowl."

Wood said the Lions didn't feel the need to propose any rule changes relating to the reporting of eligible receivers at this week's meetings " 'cause we think we did it correctly."

The Lions made four proposals at this week's meetings, including a change to the challenge system that was approved Monday. Last year, the team proposed a new third quarterback rule that also passed.

"I don’t know that there’s anything that we could have done differently that would have caused the ref to recognize 68 (Decker's number) vs. 70 (Skipper's), so it wasn’t one that we talked about," Wood said. "There’s a few others that we talked about that we didn’t submit, but one passed this morning, we have a couple more that’ll be discussed (Tuesday). So it’s a different approach maybe than what we’ve done in the past, where we actually have people taking notes during the season of potential rule changes that we may want to bring up. And I think we’ve got a process now that’s yielded, at least last year we got the quarterback, this year we got the third challenge. All about improving the league and improving things from our perspective for everybody, not just the Lions."

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Rod Wood asked NFL exec if he prayed for officiating after Dallas game