What was the sequence of plays for the series where Third down erroneously called as Fourth?

[KC-KS-Lion]

What were the sequence of plays, and any referee actions in the series where Penn State lost its third down?
I was out at an outdoor music event, they had a widescreen tv with no audio, but didn't realize there was this controversy til I read the threads after the game.

 

[CDLionFL]

1st - Clifford threw deep, miscommunication with Washington who broke it off. Clifford called for grounding. 😡
2nd and 15 - short play to sideline for 4 (down marker on sideline said 3)
3rd and 11 - punt
🤬🤬🤬

 

[fairfaxlion2]

What were the sequence of plays, and any referee actions in the series where Penn State lost its third down?
I was out at an outdoor music event, they had a widescreen tv with no audio, but didn't realize there was this controversy til I read the threads after the game.

it appeared that the officiating crew thought loss of down meant 2nd down gets skipped, and it went from 1st to 3rd. It was 4th down before anybody noticed. Then when PSU complained the replay booth thought their only job was to confirm that the prior down was 3rd.

It looked like sheer incompetence.

 

[KC-KS-Lion]

Thanks.

I was wondering. That did seem to be a short series. The refs must've been focused on looking sincere on a calling such a terrible grounding penalty.

 

[CVLion]

@KC-KS-Lion, the refs even paused to deliberate on 3rd down and the head referee then actually announced that 4th was the correct down (which it wasn’t.) And Franklin was yelling his head off that it was supposed to be 3rd.

So it’s not even something that slipped by under the radar. It was a flagrant group f#%k up by the officials as a whole. Absolutely inexcusable.

 

[CJFisJoePaII]

Thanks.

I was wondering. That did seem to be a short series. The refs must've been focused on looking sincere on a calling such a terrible grounding penalty.

The Grounding call was made in direct contradiction to the NCAA Rulebook - this is excerpted directly from NCAA Rulebook & Rules Interpretation Manual:

Note 1: In all cases except when the ball is thrown directly into the ground, there is no foul unless there is pressure on the passer. This is implicit in all guidelines
below

Every single specific section, and citation, of Rule in Rulebook starts: "While under duress....". Utterly bullshit call that is completely contradictory to what the Rulebook SPECIFICALLY states about this exact type of play. No defender was anywhere close to Clifford on the play and Clifford was not remotely "under duress", quite the contrary in REALITY. Beyond ridiculous call and clearly corrupt from start to finish.

 

[Erial_Lion]

The issue seemed to stem from the fact that they called grounding late…the chains had already flipped it to second down, and the referee(s) probably already move his whistle on his hand to second down. When the called the loss of down penalty, they thought they should be skipping 2nd down, and jumped to third down.

 

[Tom McAndrew]

it was posted in the Game Thread:

 

[CDLionFL]

The issue seemed to stem from the fact that they called grounding late…the chains had already flipped it to second down, and the referee(s) probably already move his whistle on his hand to second down. When the called the loss of down penalty, they thought they should be skipping 2nd down, and jumped to third down.

Isn’t the R (white hat) the one who makes the final call on grounding? This does sound like a decent excuse if another of his band of merry idiots on his crew came to him with info about grounding. But that doesn’t excuse the replay guy from not getting them straightened out.

Btw, loved it on the next possession, there was a penalty and they showed Franklin yelling at them what the correct down should be this time.

 

[Erial_Lion]

Isn’t the R (white hat) the one who makes the final call on grounding? This does sound like a decent excuse if another of his band of merry idiots on his crew came to him with info about grounding. But that doesn’t excuse the replay guy from not getting them straightened out.

Btw, loved it on the next possession, there was a penalty and they showed Franklin yelling at them what the correct down should be this time.

My assumption would be that replay simply backed up to the prior play and saw the down marker was showing 3rd down. They probably didn’t have enough time there to back up through the entire sequence and realize the mistake.

In hindsight, Franklin should have called time out and challenged it to slow things down and realize their mistake. But tough to fault him in the moment, as things were happening quickly, and he might have had some doubt on the sequence.

 

[CDLionFL]

Yeah, you can't fault Franklin at all for not calling the timeout after being told by an on-field official that replay agreed with what they had. And I know he plays the PC game in press conferences but considering it was a different conference's officials, I wish he had gone scorched earth in his postgame comments.

 

[KCLion]

My assumption would be that replay simply backed up to the prior play and saw the down marker was showing 3rd down. They probably didn’t have enough time there to back up through the entire sequence and realize the mistake.

In hindsight, Franklin should have called time out and challenged it to slow things down and realize their mistake. But tough to fault him in the moment, as things were happening quickly, and he might have had some doubt on the sequence.

He did take a penalty for delay of game.

 

[Erial_Lion]

He did take a penalty for delay of game.

We didn’t take a delay of game before the early punt.

 

[PSUFBFAN]

The issue seemed to stem from the fact that they called grounding late…the chains had already flipped it to second down, and the referee(s) probably already move his whistle on his hand to second down. When the called the loss of down penalty, they thought they should be skipping 2nd down, and jumped to third down.

You are correct - the penalty was called very late by the ref and really caught everyone off guard because everybody in the stadium except the ref recognized it was simply a broken route pass incompletion - not intentional grounding.

Here's where the screw up really started - when the ref called the penalty and gave his description over the on-field mic, he said "loss of down - it's 3rd down". So, the ref screwed it up right there as he should have said it was 2nd down. This caused the PA announcer to also announce it was 3rd down to everybody in the stadium. So, between the ref's announcement and the PA announcer, the chain gang moved the down indicator to 3rd down, when it should have been 2nd down. PSU ran the next play which didn't pick up the first, so everybody came off the field and we punted.

As soon as the ref called the penalty and improperly announced it was 3rd down, I was 95% sure that it was wrong, so I began watching the PSU sidelines very carefully. It was clear from his body language that CJF knew EXACTLY what was happening from the very first moment. He called the ref over and was emphatically discussing the situation, but wasn't having any luck changing the ref's mind. This discussion continued during the commercial TV TO after the punt. Based upon the body language of everybody involved, I would bet a large sum of money that the ref then figured out that he screwed it up, but it was too late to do anything because PSU already punted.

I am convinced that it was during the TV TO when the ref recognized his mistake. He went on to the field and called a meeting with the rest of the officials. You could almost tell exactly what the discussion was and they all realized their f.u. This seemed to be confirmed during the very next PSU possession where they gave what I thought was a clear make up call when they spotted the ball at least a yard more than it should have been in order to give PSU a first down. Unfortunately, the replay booth caught on to that, buzzed down to replay the spot and properly moved it back a yard or so, taking away the PSU first down.

 

[BOSCO2]

What were the sequence of plays, and any referee actions in the series where Penn State lost its third down?
I was out at an outdoor music event, they had a widescreen tv with no audio, but didn't realize there was this controversy til I read the threads after the game.

1st down, 2nd down, 4th down.