EmailPrintOpen Extended ReactionsDETROIT -- The New Orleans Saints and Detroit Lions didn't know what to make of a controversial call that occurred early in a wild 31-30 Lions overtime win.Lions quarterback Jared Goff called it a "great call." Saints defensive end Chase Young said he'd "never seen anything like it."It was clear both sides didn't know whether officials made the correct call to change a strip/sack and defensive touchdown to an incomplete pass by Goff."I was trying to figure it out on the fly too," Goff acknowledged after the game.The controversy started with what looked like a routine strip/sack with 9:33 left in the second quarter. With the Lions leading 7-0, Young beat tackle Penei Sewell and sacked Goff around the Lions' 23-yard line. The ball popped out and bounced across the field to the 12-yard line, where Saints edge rusher Carl Granderson and Lions tight end Sam LaPorta raced to recover it.Saints defensive back Jonas Sanker scooped it up and ran into the end zone to tie the score 7-7. Officials initially said it was a backward pass and a touchdown. The replay official then reviewed the play and changed the call to an incomplete forward pass."Look, they reviewed it. I'm sure that's how the rule is in the rulebook and it is what it is. It's all right. To me, it looked a whole lot like a sack/fumble," Saints linebacker Kaden Elliss said.The ball traveling backward only led to the confusion."That's tough when the ball goes backwards. I felt like even if your arms went forward, the ball went backwards it looked like, but I don't know," Saints quarterback Tyler Shough said. "I didn't get to see the replay or anything like that. It's obviously a huge momentum swing, but at the end of the day we don't do enough on offense to go up there and finish it either. So just control what we can that way and that just kind of shows our defense playing our butts off the whole time."According to the 2026 NFL official rulebook: "When a Team A player is holding the ball to pass it forward, any intentional movement forward of his hand starts a forward pass..."If contact by an opponent materially affects a passer after the passer begins his throwing motion, it is a forward pass if he passes the ball, regardless of where the ball strikes the ground, a player, an official, or anything else. When this occurs, intentional grounding rules do not apply.When a passer is contacted by an opponent before beginning his throwing motion, the direction of the pass is the responsibility of the passer, and intentional grounding rules apply."Officials alluded to this rule when discussing the call in a pool report distributed by the Pro Football Writers of America.Mark Butterworth, the NFL's Vice President of Instant Replay, said the ruling came down to the fact that Goff had already begun his throwing motion."If the defender contacts the passer prior to the passer starting his throwing motion, it can be ruled as a backward pass," he told pool reporter Ben Raven. "Because Goff had already started his throwing motion, and then the defender contacted him, it is therefore a forward pass."Butterworth said the throwing motion starts "as he begins to bring the ball up as part of his windup and then the defender's contact made the pass go backwards."Saints coach Kellen Moore called the ruling "a little bit of a challenging circumstance," but said from what he understands, "once the arm is moving, no matter where the ball's going, there's a protection there."Forward pass or backward pass? Nobody quite seemed to know, but Lions coach Dan Campbell was just happy to get the call."Look, I'll take that one. I'll be the first to say, man, I thought we lost that one," Campbell said. "But, the arm was going forward. It had a forward motion. That was how they saw it. We got one. We'll take that."
