Joe Buck and Mike Pereira Couldn’t Believe Referees Upheld a Legitimately Horrible Call on Review

J.D. McKissic slipped and fell on the notorious FedEx Field turf on a 2nd down play on Thursday Night Football. He was ruled down short of the line and would get the first down on the very next play, but the official review of the play where he fell may well be the worst review in the history of the NFL.

McKissic fell without being touched and clearly made it past the invisitble yellow line before anyone touched him. Since the play took place in the last two minutes of the half, the play was automatically reviewed. The fact that officials looked at this and upheld the call absolutely floored Joe Buck, Troy Aikman and Mike Periera.

Buck: “Wow. They’re standing with that call? And it’s something – and MIke Periera’s with us. Mike, they are airing on the side of, if you want to saying airing, They are definitely staying with more calls this year.”

Pereira: “Well, they are, but in this case clearly he wasn’t touched. So he gets the full advance. I’m a little bit surprised by that because it is reviewable as to the line to gain, but, um, they did stay with it, as you said.”

This is about as close as you can come to unprecedented criticizm of NFL referees as you will ever get from Buck and Pereira. And rightfully so. The call on the field was bad and the review proved that. If a crew can look at this and not fix a call why should players, teams and fans have any faith in this system?