Miami-Duke kickoff return: a first look

This is a first look at the Miami kickoff return against Duke. It will not be the last.

On Monday, you can expect a series of recommendations in terms of rules and policies for college football to adopt. In this immediate look at a remarkable play — and a remarkable failure of replay review — we’ll simply take you through the different parts of this play.

It was complicated enough in real time. We won’t engage in lengthy explanations.

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First, was the knee of a Miami player down before an attempted lateral on the play?

The main view you saw on TV was this one:

A few freeze frames of the play were shown, and while it certainly seems that the knee MIGHT have been down, it looked like a bang-bang play — a 50-50 call — from that angle. The ball might have come loose from the Miami player’s hand before the knee hit.

We needed another angle — an angle TV didn’t supply — to more clearly ascertain whether the Miami player was down or not.

Presto:

You can see in the photo above that the ball is still being firmly cupped or clasped with the knee down. There’s no daylight or separation between hand and ball — they are attached with the knee still down.

Next…

Was there at least one obvious and indisputable block in the back on the play? Miami seemed to have made some borderline blocks later in the play, but those were tricky calls in which defenders or blockers spun to the side at the last instant, changing the angle. Was there a CLEAR block in the back?

Bingo:

Was there anything else on the play we missed?

Oh, look what another member of #CollegeFootballTwitter found:

Not only did Miami have a 12th man run onto the field during play, but without a helmet. Somehow, this was missed. In the heat of battle, I can see how officials would be so utterly surprised that they’d miss it, but replay — which CAN review 12 men on the field — should have caught it.

After roughly NINE MINUTES of review, it didn’t.

As for the block in the back, that’s not a reviewable play, and while the officials can indeed confer among each other and pick up the flag if they revise their ruling, that’s not something which can come from the replay booth. Given the way the lead official announced the play, however, he gave the impression that the reversal of the block in the back call was booth-influenced or booth-created. Maybe that’s not actually the way it went down, but the impression was created.

This is a total mess.

What to do about it? We’ll save that for Monday.