The San Francisco 49ers lost 29-20 to the Atlanta Falcons. Regardless of injuries, they played poorly. And that’s an understatement. In the game threads, there were a lot of comments about the officiating (me included). The officiating didn’t cost the 49ers the game—defensive tackle Osa Odighizuwa jumping on fourth down cost them the game (or at least three points); Kaelon Black’s fumble cost them the game.
But the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Many of those comments compared Falcons safety Jessie
Bates III’s interception of quarterback Brock Purdy to wide receiver Jordan Watkins phantom touchdown. The question comes from the consistency of the catches.
Watkins’ touchdown was wiped off because he didn’t maintain control to the ground out of bounds and bobbled the ball, while in Purdy’s interception, Bates did just that and it was ruled a catch.
Ehhhhh, that’s a bit of a stretch.
Here’s the interception from Purdy. The ball moves, but it looks like he has firm control of it. Purdy was trying to throw it out of bounds, and Bates made a good play.
“I thought maybe Christian Kirk on the scramble was going to be there,” Purdy said after the game. “But then towards the end, as I was getting ready to throw. I was, ‘like no it’s not’ and so I just went to throw it away by the sideline and then Bates all of a sudden came across and made a good play.”
Was it a bad throw? Sure, but I think nine times out of ten, Bates probably isn’t going to make that play. Especially when you consider a minor detail we’ll go over.
The ball moves, but I didn’t see much bobbling. You do see some bobbling on the Watkins catch below:
That’s the rule, unfortunately. Watkins made a hell of a catch, and Purdy threw a nice ball; Watkins just couldn’t stay inbounds. Thus, yet another Brock Purdy magic touchdown is only an ‘almost’ and sits with that run against the Arizona Cardinals this year and that Brandon Aiyuk pass that was dropped in the NFC Wild Card.
The officiating crew was very inconsistent, but these two plays don’t really add to that. Both are pretty clear in my view. If you disagree, feel free to jump in. But we’ll get to that in a moment.
Back to the pick: there’s another question that needs answering. When Brock threw the ball, why did Jacob Cowing quit? Credit to Matt Nahigian for calling this out on .X.
That’s a good question. Why wasn’t Cowing jumping ahead of Bates to get it? I didn’t even notice this in real time, but he just slows down when Purdy throws the ball away. Cowing’s a fast guy; had he taken off, maybe he could have plucked that thing before it went out of bounds—or at least helped his quarterback by swatting the ball away.
If you do want to argue that the calls are inconsistent, I see where you’re coming from. My follow-up would be: if Cowing didn’t stop here, would any of this have happened? Even if it was a bad call, the interception may not have happened if Cowing plays to the whistle.
Perhaps we’ll get an answer to this when Shanahan next talks to the media.
You know what was a bad penalty? Offsides because the officials wouldn’t let the 49ers substitute.
Now that is something irritating. The Falcons offense substituted their players; by rule, the 49ers defense needs a chance to match. That is why teams run a hurry-up offense and don’t substitute players—so the defense stays on their heels. The moment a substitution goes in, the officiating crew must allow time for the 49ers to do the same. The Falcons got to sub, and the 49ers didn’t, basically. This was the beginning of what was a poor and often one-sided game by Clay Martin’s crew.
And let’s not get to all the stoppages for two-minute discussions between the officials. This is also called the ref show, and it’s the absolute worst show to watch. Some calls were easy to make; others were just long conversations to restate the obvious.
Despite how bad Martin’s crew was, the 49ers had opportunities to get off the field and regain the lead. Unfortunately, they couldn’t play disciplined enough or take care of the football to do so.
