The NFL has admitted a rather embarrassing officiating mistake from Week 5: When Buccaneers defensive lineman Calijah Kancey was called for illegal hands to the face, it was actually a Cowboys player who put his hands in Kancey’s face, and somehow the wrong team got assessed the penalty when it was time to step off the yardage.
In the weekly officiating video, NFL officiating and rules analyst Walt Anderson said Cowboys guard Tyler Booker put his hands in Kancey’s face but somehow that was miscommunicated as Kancey committing the penalty. Anderson said when the on-field officials make a mistake that blatant, the league officiating office should correct it immediately.
“Were going to have a foul called on No. 94 on the defensive team for illegal hands to the face,” Anderson said. “The only action relative to any hands is really by the offensive player here. So this is the type of play that the Competition Committee has instructed officiating that if objective information in terms of just asking the officials, ‘Are we sure we have the right number of the player here?’ that we can end up assisting with this. Because it’s clearly not a foul by No. 94. If there is illegal use of hands, it’s obviously by No. 52 of the offense.”
Kancey made clear in the moment that he knew it was a bad call, but there’s nothing a player can do to fix a bad call against him. The New York officiating office could have fixed it, but didn’t.