Day after Tyreek Hill’s non-TD catch, Chiefs’ coach says he hopes to prevent a repeat
The Chiefs defeated the Denver Broncos on Sunday Night Football to clinch a postseason berth.
Wide receiver Tyreek Hill’s non-touchdown catch, however, remained one that got away the day after the Chiefs’ 22-16 win.
Early in the second quarter, Hill went deep on a third-down play and made a leaping dive at a pass thrown by quarterback Patrick Mahomes. The ball tipped off his hands, then glanced off Broncos cornerback A.J. Bouye’s helmet before taking a fortuitous bounce right back into Hill’s arms as both players fell to the ground in the end zone.
The pass was ruled incomplete, but the Chiefs stood a good chance of an getting the no-catch ruling overturned on a coach’s challenge. Video replay of the sequence clearly showed Hill had made the catch.
But Chiefs coach Andy Reid, who relies on reviews of odd situations from staffers nestled high in the stadium press box, never threw his red challenge flag. Instead, the Chiefs quickly punted the ball away on fourth down, and the chance to dispute the call was gone.
Now, Reid is taking steps to prevent a recurrence of that rare and frustrating turn of events.
“I met with a few of the people here on that situation and how we might be able to not have that happen again,” Reid said Monday. “Again, that’s my responsibility there.”
The Chiefs don’t rely on the network television feed to make quick decisions about whether a play should be challenged or left to stand. Instead, the team utilizes an in-house feed, which also goes directly to the large Arrowhead Stadium scoreboard.
The timing Sunday night prevented the Chiefs from seeing the whole play until it was too late.
“It just timed up; it was a weird deal,” Reid said. “We really haven’t had that problem, so we’ve been pretty good with it, but this was unique.”
Hill might have helped the situation had he been more emphatic on the sideline before the Chiefs’ punt team was sent out.
“He said, ‘I jumped too soon and I didn’t get it. I dropped it,’” Reid recalled. “So, I go, ‘All right.’ Then, all of a sudden, there’s a chance that he actually caught the ball.”
The Chiefs’ coach said he watched the official’s reaction in the end zone.
“He sensed something because he kind of did the little shuffle to the left to see if he could get a better position,” Reid said. “But even he, I think, he was fooled by it, too.”
The day after one of the strangest things you’ll see on a football field, Reid lamented that touchdown that never was, even as he accepted what happened.
Or, in this case, didn’t happen.
“I mentioned how it kind of went down (Sunday night), and so our people upstairs got the live feed as fast as they possibly could up on the board and to the box,” Reid said. “It just wasn’t quite in time to take a review of it before we had to punt, but that’s no fault of theirs, and it’s one of those things.”
