‘Trash!’ Livid Miami Dolphins lose to New York Jets on replay reversal
Trash.
Not our words.
Nik Needham’s.
As in, a trash decision led to a trash outcome for the Dolphins.
And maybe, just maybe, the NFL should trash its deeply unpopular pass interference replay rule once and for all.
The Dolphins are in the dumps today because of a decision made not in North Jersey, but across the Hudson River.
A non-call on the field turned into a pass interference penalty via review, directly leading to the Jets’ 22-21 victory Sunday.
Here’s first what happened, and then the response from all the important people:
It was Jets ball, third-and-18 from Miami’s 46 with 47 seconds left in regulation. The Dolphins led by two.
Needham drew Vyncint Smith in coverage along the left boundary. Smith ran an in-breaking route. Sam Darnold threw Smith’s way. Needham made contact with Smith early, slightly tugging at the receiver’s right shoulder, and broke up the pass. There was no flag on the field.
But NFL senior VP of officiating Al Riveron buzzed in from NFL HQ to stop play for a closer look — the protocol since there was under two minutes left in regulation. The NFL this offseason made pass interference calls and non-calls subject to review.
After a few minutes, ultimately he decided that yes, Needham did indeed interfere. Instead of fourth-and-18, the Jets had first-and-10 at the 38. The Jets got as close as Miami’s 26 before sending in Sam Ficken for a 44-yard field goal attempt on the final play of the game.
Ficken made it.
The game was over. But the drama was just beginning.
Flores sought out officials on the field post-game and yelled. And yelled. And yelled some more.
Needham, meanwhile, vented in the locker room to reporters post-game.
“We fought our ass off, 60 minutes of strong, hard football,” the rookie cornerback said. “Fought back from halftime down a little bit, came back, was up and we lost on a call. It’s trash, I’m not going to lie.”
Needham was convinced that if both that call and one for a touchdown that went against him via review earlier in the game went the other way, the Dolphins would have won.
Teammate Davon Godchaux agreed.
“I figured that last call was the outcome of the game,” Godchaux said. “... We should have won that game.”
Perhaps. Or perhaps the officials got the call right.
Godchaux said that “I feel like in that situation, tough ball game, those type of calls, you just can’t make. Receivers play a little bit physical, cornerbacks play a little bit physical. I just feel like that particular point of the game, it could have both ways. I just feel like you don’t make that call. You let the game play.”
But the league decided differently after last year’s NFC Championship game, when a missed obvious pass interference sent the Rams, not the deserving Saints, to the Super Bowl.
Back in the Meadowlands on Sunday, Needham definitely made early contact with Smith, as Riveron noted in pool interview Sunday.
“It’s clear and obvious that [Needham] grabs the receiver by his shoulder, turns him prior to the ball getting there, and significantly hinders him before the ball arrives,” Riveron explained. “Therefore by rule, that’s pass interference.”
Flores refused to re-litigate the decision with reporters in his post-game news conference, but based on his reaction on the field, you can be sure he will have words with the league Monday morning, if he hadn’t by then already.
Still, the Dolphins were not blameless when it comes to Sunday’s outcome.
Despite entering the game with the league’s fourth-best red-zone offense, their five trips inside the 20 resulted in five field goal attempts. A touchdown on any one of those trips could have changed the outcome as much as a non-call on DPI.
An offense that had shown great progress regressed.
“Awful, terrible,” Dolphins center Daniel Kilgore said, when asked of his emotions after the game. “Personally, I’ve got to play better. Personally, I feel like I let down the front five. Personally I feel like we’ve got to give [Ryan Fitzpatrick] more time. Personally feel like we’ve got to come back tomorrow ready to work.”
As for the game’s controversial ending?
“We should never have been in that situation,” Kilgore said. “We should have played better offensively and we wouldn’t have been in that situation.”
The upside: Those who believe the Dolphins win by losing and lose by winning were happy. The Dolphins (3-10) went to bed Sunday the same way they woke up: On track for the fourth pick in the 2020 draft.
More upside: Jason Sanders was a stud again Sunday — and will likely win his third AFC special teams player of the week award of the season — kicking a team-record seven field goals on a team-record eight attempts.
But even he wasn’t perfect, missing from 34. That cost the Dolphins three points. They lost by one.
One quick postscript on Needham: He made sure to watch the replay of his pass interference play before getting asked about it.
“I felt like that was a competitive [play],” Needham said. “How else am I supposed to get to the receiver if he’s in front of me? I can’t run through him. I’ve got to run around him to get the ball out.”
And was that consistent with how officials had been calling that play Sunday?
“No, not at all. They didn’t call anything all game until the last play. That’s crazy.”
This story was originally published December 8, 2019 at 4:14 PM.
