Pete was having a really bad day yesterday. I couldn't believe he challenged that. The ONLY difference between the catch and the penalty was about 3 yards. They still get the first down. Not worth the reward for risking the timeout. Bad idea pete

Those are fair questions. There is no defense that doesn't run zone in certain situations, but Seattle did seem to run an excess of it.

Pete, on KIRO, said he knew he shouldn't challenge, but someone on the headset said the ball came out and he, in all the excitement of the game, noticed the clock was at about 6 seconds, so he just quickly got the refs attention and challenged the play. He said he realized what he did after he threw the flag but it was too late.

Little things like this really need to be rare occurrences, and on their own, the occasional error like this isn't a big deal, and I don't think it's necessarily a sign of a bad coach, but I really am starting to wonder if Pete's up to running an NFL offense.

Great question on the soft zone, and one I've been asking for the last three weeks now.

We have a great ATTACKING defense.....key word "attacking." Don't make them retreat into a soft zone on 3rd downs, keep attacking Pete!

I think you guys are missing the major point of the article...

Why do we run zone defenses so often with 6'3 6'4 corners who are famous for being physical? I haven't ever really brought it up on the boards before, but I've been screaming it at my tv since I noticed it happening way too much in the 2nd half of the packers game. I'm not a huge x's and o's guy, so I figured since no one else had said anything about it then it must not be a big deal, but it seems like every time we run zone our defense is worse than the sum of its parts. By a lot.

Also even if the challenge was successful, wasn't there a penalty on the play that the Lions previously declined?

hoxrox wrote:Also even if the challenge was successful, wasn't there a penalty on the play that the Lions previously declined?

Yes, it was defensive holding on Browner...would have been 5 yards and a first down. Pete admitted on the radio that it was a bad idea, but he made the call in a split second and it was too late by the time he realized what had happened.

Why couldn't he say he was challenging based on all of these stupid criteria like Harbaugh did? I don't know how he did it, but Harbaugh was able to challenge that last play against us, but only if.... and the ref gave some qualifiers. It's pretty weird how the league operates on a week-to-week basis. Maybe he thought that they had made their decision on the call and had to stick and the review could change it. Stupid yes... but after what happened last week, I guess nobody really understands the rules on challenges.

I am wondering if anybody has clarified why Stafford wasn't called for grounding with 24 seconds left. It's too bad grounding isn't reviewable, because that one should have been reviewed in the booth... but it's a "judgement call". BS on that. That was a game changer and should have been called.

SharkHawk wrote:Why couldn't he say he was challenging based on all of these stupid criteria like Harbaugh did? I don't know how he did it, but Harbaugh was able to challenge that last play against us, but only if.... and the ref gave some qualifiers. It's pretty weird how the league operates on a week-to-week basis. Maybe he thought that they had made their decision on the call and had to stick and the review could change it. Stupid yes... but after what happened last week, I guess nobody really understands the rules on challenges.

I am wondering if anybody has clarified why Stafford wasn't called for grounding with 24 seconds left. It's too bad grounding isn't reviewable, because that one should have been reviewed in the booth... but it's a "judgement call". BS on that. That was a game changer and should have been called.

I thought it should have been grounding too, and haven't heard much about that one.

As for the challenge. Brock and Salk told Pete that he should have just said that he used the challenge instead of a timeout to give the defense a rest......Pete said that he didn't want to do that, and that he honestly just got overexcited and made a mistake. I'm glad he owned up to it, but it's something that really should have never happened and hopefully it won't happen again.