With less than a minute remaining and the Bills trailing the Patriots 41-17 on Sunday, Buffalo running back Jonathan Williams appeared to score a touchdown. But the officials ruled that he was down short of the goal line, and Rex Ryan was not happy about that.
So Ryan threw his challenge flag, even though he knew that in the final two minutes of the half he is not allowed to challenge anything -- and even though it was a meaningless play, given that Buffalo was losing by 24 points with less than a minute to play. Now Ryan is admitting he shouldn’t have done that.
“That was stupid on my part,” Ryan said. “I was upset because I told the [refs] I can’t challenge it. I said, I can’t throw the red flag; it’s inside of two minutes, I can’t challenge. I said, but it’s clearly a touchdown, can you please review it? You guys know it is, please review it. I know the game doesn’t matter, the game’s over, I get it. But it’d be nice if this kid gets a touchdown. I said, it’s clearly a touchdown. So they didn’t do it and I did something stupid.”
It was stupid of Ryan to do it, but he’s also right that the play clearly should have been reviewed. The replay official upstairs clearly erred by failing to buzz the referee to inform him that the play needed to be looked at again, and Ryan was right to be upset that the official didn’t do his job.
