Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell, like the rest of the NFL world, was left stunned by a controversial call that benefited his team in a wild 31-30 overtime win against the New Orleans Saints.
The moment came early in the second quarter of the Week 1 game at Ford Field, when Saints defensive end Chase Young hit quarterback Jared Goff around Detroit's 23-yard line, and forced a fumble.
As the ball popped out and bounced across the field to the 12-yard line, defensive back Jonas Sanker scooped it up and ran into the end zone to tie the score 7-7.
NFL officials initially said it was a backward pass from Goff, and a defensive touchdown for the Saints.
However, the replay official then reviewed the play, and changed the call to an incomplete forward pass -- even though the ball went backward.
As a result, the Lions kept possession, and the New Orleans points were taken off the board.
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Dan Campbell reacts as controversial call benefits Lions
The call quickly emerged as one of the biggest talking points from Sunday's Week 1 action, with many fans stunned it was ruled a passing attempt.
Even Campbell, who has recently made a major lifestyle change, was unable to hide his surprise postgame.
"I'll take that one. IâÂÂll be the first to say, I thought we lost that one," he told reporters.
"The arm was going forward, it had a forward motion, that was how they saw it.
"We got one. WeâÂÂll take that."
There was similar confusion in the Saints locker room, with Young suggesting he'd 'never seen anything like it.'
"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," New Orleans quarterback Tyler Shough added.
"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."
The Saints went on to lose by just one point in overtime, and were unsurprisingly irked by a call that many on social media have described as 'absurd.'
The rulebook, though, confirms officials were right.
NFL officials made right call on Jared Goff play
The official 2026 rulebook states: "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."
Mark Butterworth, the NFL's vice president of instant replay, alluded to that rule when discussing the call in a pool report distributed by the Pro Football Writers of America.
"If the defender contacts the passer prior to the passer starting his throwing motion, it can be ruled as a backward pass," he told reporters
"Because Goff had already started his throwing motion, and then the defender contacted him, it is therefore a forward pass."
Butterworth added that Goff's throwing motion started as he began to bring the ball up as part of his windup, and that the defender's contact made the pass go backwards.
It might have been a confusing call for many watching, but it was the correct one. That will mean little for the Saints, though, who perhaps will feel they could have been 1-0 instead of 0-1 to start the season thanks to a spirited display in Detroit.