‘No, no, it was an optical illusion’: How the NFL shut down a field goal controversy

Eighteen days after Minnesota Vikings kicker Will Reichard missed a 51-yard field goal attempt against the Cleveland Browns in London, when his ball took an unexpected turn, Amazon Prime play-by-play announcer Al Michaels reminded viewers that the strange curve of the ball at Tottenham Stadium is still a sensitive subject for the league.

«They’ve got a great kicker, Reichard is terrific,» Michaels said as the kicker prepared for his first field goal attempt with nine minutes left in the second quarter of Thursday night’s 37-10 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers. «He comes in for a 54-yard attempt. His only miss this year was when he hit a wire — with the camera — in London!»

Reichard made his field goal, and back at 345 Park Avenue, a seemingly resolved mystery sprang to life once again. Already, the NFL had rejected a request from Reichard’s agent to drop the miss from the kicker’s official statistics. The league’s football operations department thought it was important enough to warrant a video presentation at the October owners meeting. Now, following Michaels’ on-air comments, NFL officiating and rules analyst Walt Anderson was pulled into the fray.

Anderson, the former VP of officiating training and development and a 17-year referee, now quietly assists each network’s rules analysts during games. The league says his role is to help each network’s broadcasters sound smarter, but as with any job in the league office, the first duty is to protect the shield, and Michaels’ comment reignited a dormant controversy that the league thought it had moved past.

A league spokesperson said Anderson immediately called Amazon Prime’s rules analyst Terry McAulay, and explained to him the league’s official stance on the London field goal, that Reichard’s ball did not make contact with the camera cable in London.

A league spokesperson said the league’s broadcasting department was in touch with Amazon’s production team during the game as well.

After a full quarter of game time, another field goal attempt, and more than an hour of broadcast time, Michaels, with his trademark sarcasm, issued a correction.

«The league wants to take my lunch away because I said before that Reichard’s only miss came when he hit a wire in London,» Michaels said. «The league says, ‘No, no, it was an optical illusion.’ [That’s] not what Reichard thinks.»

Reichard, for the record, told ESPN Monday that after his miss in London, his agent (Sportstar’s Jim Ivler) told him that he contacted the league office to ask about getting his miss removed from the official statistics. Reichard says that Ivler told him that his contact in the league office initially responded that his kick did hit the camera wire and they would change his stats to 0-0 for the day, and then followed up later to say that the league couldn’t do that.

«I guess they at first said that they would [change the statistic] and then came back the next day and said they couldn’t,» Reichard said. «But they admitted to it hitting. Take that for what it’s worth.»

Ivler, who has represented NFL players for 32 years, confirmed to ESPN that he did reach out to the league office in an attempt to amend Reichard’s statistics, but he declined to name the specific league office employee who he contacted. He said that the league office employee didn’t give him an immediate answer, but followed up about a half hour later after talking with someone else in the office, and indicated that he felt the ball hit the wire and they would be able to change the statistic. Ivler said that the league office employee then reversed course a couple of hours later and said they would be unable to change the statistic because the play had not been reviewed in the game.

An NFL spokesperson said in a statement to ESPN: «There is no video evidence of the football making contact with the broadcast cable. The day after the game, we were in touch with our colleagues who handled production responsibilities for the NFL Network broadcast. Those engineers, who were on site in London, verified that because of the position of the camera behind the kicker and where the cables were mounted in the stadium, it was not possible for the cables to interfere with the flight of the ball. The slow-motion replay of the kick that went to air was from a low-end zone camera on the tight end of its lens, which compresses the plane of focus. That’s why the football and one of the cables are visible in the same shot, but the ball in no way made any contact with the cable.»

A league spokesperson declined to comment on Reichard and Ivlers’ specific allegation that someone in the league office indicated to Ivler that Reichard’s statistics would be changed.

Ivler said he was watching the Vikings’ London game on television at a Ravens tailgate when he saw Reichard’s ball take a spooky turn. «Will’s ball does not move like that,» he said. «I knew something was wrong.»

He watched the replay multiple times and took a screenshot of the moment he believes Reichard’s ball hit the wire. «The wire clearly ripples unevenly,» he said. «The ball isn’t going end-over-end anymore but fluttering diagonally.»

Per NFL Rule 15, Section 3, Article 11, Item 5: The ball touching a foreign object (scoreboard, guide wire, any other object) is a replay reviewable play, and is a challengeable play.

But the league’s replay department did not initiate a review of the play, and on the Monday after the London game, Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell said he didn’t notice anything in real time. He said field goals are tough to judge from his vantage point on the sideline anyway.

«[Will] told me he thought he hit [the kick] well, and Will doesn’t end up that far off line historically since our time having him here,» O’Connell said. «Not sure what to say on that one, it’s unfortunate if it did happen, and if it didn’t, so be it.»

After Minnesota’s bye week following the London game, Vikings special teams coordinator Matt Daniels told reporters that the team submitted the play to the league office as one of their 10 allotted plays for review that prior week, but he deferred to O’Connell on the league’s response. O’Connell has not addressed the play publicly since the day after the game.

«Maybe it did [hit the wire], maybe it didn’t,» Daniels said. «We will allow the league to work that out.»

«The biggest question that I had, because I have seen Will hit a gazillion balls,» Daniels said, «Was just in terms of how it came off of his foot, and the trajectory of it and how it went off to the side. How did the ball end up doing that? I had a good conversation with Will and he felt like he hit it clean.»

Reichard told ESPN Monday that it’s «really hard to tell» whether his ball hit the camera wire that day in Tottenham. «My ball doesn’t usually ever do that,» he said.

Reichard’s missed field goal became a Rorschach test. Vikings fans and Ivler saw a football that clearly was impacted by a camera wire, and the Vikings coaching staff questioned it enough to submit it for the league office to review, while the league office saw no evidence to suggest that it did. The controversy generated enough conversation that the league issued a video defense to NFL owners and executives during the football update at the fall league meeting in New York last week. No one in the NFL wanted to perpetuate an idea that operations at an international game had impacted the on-field product.

According to two sources in the room, the football operations staff brought up the controversial topic of camera wire interference with two different examples from Week 5. The football operations staff played Reichard’s mysterious miss in London and a play from the Cowboys at Jets game, where Jets quarterback Justin Fields‘ pass was deflected into the camera.

One source in the room said that NFL executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent and Anderson said in the meeting that Reichard’s football looked like it hit the wire, but it did not because the ball did not have «a weird spin.» The source said that Vincent and Anderson said Fields’ pass did hit the wire and the officiating crew should have started the play over as the rulebook mandates, instead of ruling an incomplete pass.

A league spokesperson sent ESPN the video of Reichard’s kick that was shown to NFL owners and executives in the football update meeting.

The 75-second video showed two different angles of Reichard’s kick, the broadcast angle from behind the kick and a low sideline angle. In the broadcast angle, the league highlighted the four camera wires in red and blue to show the position of the wires in relation to the kick. Once Reichard kicks the ball, wires are no longer highlighted.

In the low sideline angle, the league highlighted the ball in yellow to show its position in relation to the wire in red. In this angle, both the wire’s position leads off screen and so does the trajectory of the ball.

«What really needs to be done is reevaluating how low those cameras and the wires can hang over a live play,» Ivler said. «That’s what the result of all this back and forth should be.»

For his part, Reichard has not been as preoccupied with the mystery of his London kick.

«I’ve gotten asked about it tons of times from friends, family,» he said.» I would just like to put it in the rear view at this point, you know? «

And he might have been able to three weeks ago, had the league’s strong defense not given this story legs.