that was my thought? Why burn such a brilliant play on a likely unwinnable game.

loved the play
hate the chicago orange crush uni's

Joe Valerio begs to differ.

people are going to have to start watching the ball instead of just keying in on hester. So maybe that gives him more room to work down the road. I have a feeling they've had that play going more than once, but it would take a kick to the corner for it to work. I would think.

I rewound that play a few times on Sunday, just to marvel at the brilliance of it. Unfortunate that it was nullified - such a brilliantly simple play. I'm amazed I've never seen anyone else try that...

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6NUC7zYOFaQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

You can clearly see the hold at 0:03 of the video.

I didn't see a hold

Does Rosetta Stone have a package for this language? It uses words that are so familiar, and yet, my gamble-speak is too weak to comprehend. Genious! (cp)

Nevermind. It's while the ball is in the air on 21. Shitty call as it had nothing to do with the return.

There were actually multiple holds by the Bears on that play. The refs made the right call.

I don't disagree, but they were away from the play. Over-officiating.

They call shit like this, but Hali gets ****ing raped on a regular basis.

disagree. ANY hold while the ball is in the air impacts the return. No one on the kicking team is "out of the play" until the receiver has it and is clearly never going to be caught by him.

As it happened, it didn't have anything to do with the return because almost everyone was fooled, but the ref couldn't have known the trick play was on when the ball was in the air.

I don't think it is a late flag. Its a case of negative reinforcement where we never pay attention to how long after the foul a flag was thrown, and only pay attention, aside from ludicrously late flags, when a great play is called back in a close game on a hard-to-see foul and people wonder about vegas, then think "huh, took him a while to throw it". I bet if you sat with a stopwatch and just observed ref flag-throwing times all day you wouldn't see a difference. All good refs/umpires/officials should take a second to process it and think "am I sure" before reacting. He was reaching for his flag at a reasonable time.