Yeah, no kidding. That's one of the biggest problems with social media.
But this does highlight a problem for the league. In their greed for more money, they have gleefully jumped in bed with the gambling industry, so now anything like this happens, the suspicions are automatically raised. And not just with the nutbags like Portnoy. Do you remember how many otherwise rational people were convinced that Super Bowl XL was fixed?
Here's what happened:
(Kenny) Pickett completed a 26-yard pass to Tyler Lockett that moved the Raiders to Denver's 33-yard line with eight seconds left.
What happened next? A Broncos defender was assessed a delay-of-game penalty as a Raiders player attempted to get up from the tackle but struggled because a Denver defender was tangled with him. The flag stopped the clock and took the ball to the Las Vegas 28-yard line, allowing the visitors one final play despite having no timeouts and no realistic chance to win.
So, with 8 seconds left and the clock running, the refs call a meaningless delay of game penalty, stopping the clock, then Pete Carroll, instead of just taking a knee to prevent someone from getting injured, fights, etc, especially as the visiting team, and just get his team into the locker room like most coaches do in that situation, decides to kick a field goal, which made the final score 24-17 and by an odd coincidence, just happens to cover the 8.5 point spread.
I have no doubt that the refs were just doing their jobs and called the play as they saw it, and that Pete probably wanted to get his kicker some live game experience. But you'll have to admit that it looks very sketchy, and provides the conspiracy theorists with legitimate, hard to explain evidence.
