Players believe ref should have called DPI

When Mike Klis is tweeting about a bad “no call” from the refs, you know it was beyond obvious.

After perhaps the greatest Hail Mary success I’ve ever seen, Wilson tries to connect with Courtland Sutton on a two-point conversion that was clearly defensive pass interference, but the refs were having none of it.

Following the game, Broncos players were clearly disappointed in their own play that erased an 18-point lead midway in the second quarter and created an 11-point deficit with less than half a quarter to go.

But they also believed they were denied a chance at redemption with the no-call on the final play of the game.

“I thought we had it,” said quarterback Russell Wilson, who launched the ball 50 yards, touching the hands of two receivers before Brandon Johnson snagged it on the tip for the touchdown. “I thought that was a good call, a good play. I have to watch the film to see what the situation was. I think that we gave ourselves a chance to tie it up there.”

“That was an unbelievable play,” Jaleel McLaughlin said of Johnson’s Hail Mary catch. “He’s always in the right spot. We work on that day-in and day-out. ...Yeah, it was a great play. We wanted to convert that two-point [conversion] but you know what happened.”

Asked to elaborate, McLaughlin just said he’d leave it up to the ref, but...

“But, you know, in my opinion, I thought it was,” he added.

Marvin Mims, Jr., who hauled in two monster catches of his own - and scored his first NFL touchdown today - said he was expecting a PI call on that last play.

“You know, just a bang-bang play, whether it’s a passing interference or not. I was expecting it to be a pass interference. A lot of the guys wanted it to be a pass interference to give us another run at it,” he said. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t. So we just got to learn from the game and keep moving forward.”

Patrick Surtain II, who was on the receiving end of a DPI flag earlier in the game, believed there was no question Sutton was interfered with.

“I thought it was, but obviously the ref made a different call,” Surtain said. “In the heat of the moment in a game like that, obviously, I thought it would be called, but there is nothing we can do about it now. ...I thought he grabbed him a little bit; I thought it would be called, but they didn’t make the call, so we can’t go back and change it now.”

The guy who was trying to catch the ball took the politically correct route in his presser and just pointed to the film.

“There are enough cameras out there and TV coverage that everyone can watch it and figure out for themselves what might have happened,” Sutton said. “All I can talk about it is what I can control, and ‘Russ’ gave me a chance to make a play and I just got to find a way.”

In other words, of course it was DPI.

Obviously we’re all mad about giving up 30+ unanswered points and not holding onto the dominating performance throughout the game.

But if you play well enough to get back in the game and maybe win, you still deserve that W - or at least the chance to play in overtime.

Also, Dean Blandino, former VP of officiating for the NFL, totally agrees with me.