Falcons game-tying field goal set up officiated very differently than recent Cowboys playoff loss

Brett Davis-Imagn Images

Something about Thursday night’s game felt horribly familiar to Dallas Cowboys fans.

If you did not watch it, Thursday night’s game between the Atlanta Falcons and Tampa Bay Buccaneers was incredible. Unlike the previous Thursday night when the Dallas Cowboys defeated the New York Giants, points were quite common. Atlanta and Tampa combined for 66 points through the game’s end which came beyond regulation as things needed overtime to be properly settled.

Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins threw for 509 yards, four touchdowns and an interception on the night when Atlanta honored Matt Ryan by placing him in their Ring of Honor. Amazingly, Cousins broke Ryan’s single-game record for passing yards with all of that happening. Sports can be funny like that sometimes.

Something that no Cowboys fan was laughing at though was the way in which Cousins helped the game get to overtime. Down by three with 12 seconds left, he found wide receiver Drake London for 14 yards to put the Falcons in easy-ish field goal range. Given that Atlanta did not have any timeouts, that they were able to execute the play and spike the ball so quickly was impressive.

GOT THE FIRST DOWN AND SPIKED WITH ONE SECOND TO GO

OMG pic.twitter.com/lJafzVlvip

— NFL (@NFL) October 4, 2024

Watch it again. You may not laugh either.

London gets up after making the catch, clearly aware of the situation and that Atlanta needs to spike the ball and hands the ball itself to his center. Not the official.

Atlanta’s center, Ryan Neuzil, places the ball on the ground for the official to touch. You can sort of assume that this is all he is expecting to happen. If that is the case, that assumption was proven to be true as the official merely touches the ball (where Neuzil placed it, not where the official himself did) and the Falcons are able to snap the ball to spike it with a second left. The rest, as they say, is history.

On the subject of history, this specific sequence of events is a sensitive subject for Dallas Cowboys fans. You will recall the Wild Card round following the 2021 season when the Cowboys, trailing against the San Francisco 49ers (what else is new), tried to get a bit cute with Dak Prescott running a quarterback draw in the final seconds. The hope was to set Dallas up with a more doable Hail Mary, make the supremely improbable only pretty improbable.

When Prescott got up from his run he handed the ball to Tyler Biadasz, the then-center for the Cowboys. This is exactly what Drake London did on Thursday night. Unlike Thursday night’s official with Neuzil the official in the playoff game grabbed the ball and had to re-place it. The ruling was noted to be that the official has to spot the ball.

Dak Prescott ran a QB draw with 14 seconds left and handed the ball to the center, who placed the ball himself.

However, the ref is supposed to spot the ball.

The move cost Dallas a chance at a game-winning play. The 49ers advance.

@NFL pic.twitter.com/1LifgBFDAj

— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) January 17, 2022

As you can imagine there were many Cowboys fans who were reminded of this moment when Atlanta executed theirs. The situations are identical (in terms of needing to spike the ball quickly) with the ball-carrier in question handing the ball directly to the center. In Dallas’ case though, the official made sure to re-spot the ball and even moved it back a bit.

The point of this conversation isn’t to say that Dallas should have beat San Francisco, but rather to highlight the inconsistencies that exist with such important things. At the time of this writing no reasoning has been given as to why what Atlanta did was permissible (good for them, by the way) and why what Dallas did was not. They are the same exact thing.