Titanic Call Sinks Bills

It was a call by Phil Luckett’s crew a year ago, which ruled New York Jet quarterback Vinny Testaverde had scored when he had not, costing the Seattle Seahawks a playoff berth and leading to the return of instant replay.

And now Luckett, the man who heard “heads” when Jerome Bettis called “tails,” was surrounded by thousands of Tennessee Titan fans, his head buried under a curtain reviewing a lateral--legal or illegal--that would determine whether Tennessee or Buffalo advanced in the playoffs.

“The ruling on the field stands,” Luckett announced, a certain consistency to his work, and isn’t that all anyone really asks of an official?

Watching TV replays, therefore, it only “looks” as if Tennessee’s Frank Wycheck is throwing the ball from just shy of the 25-yard line, teammate Kevin Dyson catching it across the 25-yard line, and then running 75 yards for a touchdown with three seconds to play and a 22-16 AFC wild-card victory over the Bills on Saturday.

A Seattle win today will send Tennessee to Jacksonville on Saturday; a Miami victory will have the Titans taking their good luck to Indianapolis next Sunday.

“You never give up,” said Tennessee fullback Lorenzo Neal, and especially if Luckett & Co. are officiating the game.

Buffalo had taken a 16-15 lead on Steve Christie’s 41-yard field goal with 16 seconds remaining. Christie then kicked off, the Titans designing a play for Wycheck to catch the ball.

But Tennessee expected a squib kick, and instead the ball went over Wycheck and was fielded by Neal, who took the ball at his own 22-yard line and then handed it to Wycheck.

Wycheck then threw it illegally, ah, smartly across the field to Dyson, who had been instructed in practice to remain five yards behind Wycheck.

“I wasn’t supposed to be out there,” Dyson said, adding to the wonder of the play. “Derrick Mason went down, Anthony Dorsett was cramping up, so they just called my name out of the blue. As we were running on the field they were trying to explain the gist of the play to me.”

That ought to make Buffalo feel a whole lot better.

“We call it ‘Home Run Throwback,’ ” Titan Coach Jeff Fisher said. “We have practiced it every Saturday all season long, but unfortunately it’s not likely that play is going to work again.”

It didn’t appear to work this time, but there were no flags and no reversal on instant replay.

Buffalo Coach Wade Phillips refused to comment on the official’s final decision.

“Some guys from Buffalo kept saying, ‘It’s a forward pass, nice game,’ ” Wycheck said. “I didn’t know which way it would go.”

Bill quarterback Rob Johnson, who might have been forever known as “Shoeless Rob” in Buffalo lore after throwing his right shoe and still having the poise to complete a nine-yard pass to wide receiver Peerless Price to set up Christie’s attempt, will now be just another footnote in the NFL’s complement to the “Immaculate Reception,” and its answer to college’s Stanford-Cal band game.

“When I get home I’ll probably just cry my eyes out,” Buffalo cornerback Thomas Smith said.

The Bills had a first down after Price’s catch, and could have run another play, but they were out of timeouts, and Phillips, who played a hunch in starting Johnson over Doug Flutie, was not about to press his luck.

“Our quarterback didn’t have his shoe on and we didn’t want to take the chance of him slipping and losing the game,” Phillips said. “I thought we were going to win the game, but then it was taken away from us.”

TV replays leave no doubt where Wycheck was standing and where Dyson caught the ball, but it’s not Wycheck’s foot, but rather the location of the ball when it is released that determines whether it is a legal or illegal play.

“The line judge’s initial ruling was that it was not a forward pass,” Luckett said in a pool report given to the media.

And there’s the first problem. Watching with the naked eye, why didn’t the line judge throw a penalty flag on the play?

“We went to the instant replay,” Luckett continued. “Taking it from where the pass left the passer’s hand right on that [25] yard line, the receiver catches it right there on that yard line.”

Wrong again. He saw the same replays as everyone else at home watching TV and the ball was not caught “right on that yard line.”

But Luckett’s conclusion was, “It did not appear to be a forward pass, therefore it is not a foul.”

Had Luckett announced that the replay was inconclusive, making it impossible to determine where Wycheck actually released the ball, the call would have made more sense. Under those precise conditions, the call on the field--whether accurate or inaccurate--could not have been overruled.

But Luckett made it sound as if the officials knew what they were calling: Was this ruling based on where the ball left his hand?

“From where it left his hand to where it was first touched by the receiving player,” Luckett said. “So we have nothing to prove that it was a forward pass.”

Nothing but instant replay.

“He threw the ball behind the line and it was caught over the line,” Buffalo General Manager John Butler said. “What do you call that? You call it a forward pass, that’s what you call it.”

This was a game Buffalo will contend that it won, a game in which it overcame a 12-0 halftime deficit to take the lead, a throwback reminder to when it had fought back from a 35-3 disadvantage in a 1993 playoff game to the Houston Oilers, now known as the Tennessee Titans, to win, 41-38, in overtime.

The Titans, taking full advantage of all the breaks, scored the first nine points of the game off a Johnson audible gone awry. Pinned at his own eight-yard line, Johnson tried to change a play with the fans screaming loudly, only to pull away from center, fumble the ball, pick it up, and then stumble into the end zone.

Titan rookie defensive end Jevon Kearse, arguably the best defensive player in the game already, then crushed Johnson, the ball rolling out of the back of the end zone for two Tennessee points. After Mason’s 42-yard return off Buffalo’s free kick, Tennessee needed only five more plays for quarterback Steve McNair to score from four yards out to take a 9-0 lead.

An Al Del Greco 40-yard field goal ended the first half, and a quick scoring strike by Buffalo to start the third quarter kept the Titans from pulling away. Antowain Smith, who scored from four yards out, added a one-yard touchdown plunge early in the fourth quarter for a 13-12 Buffalo lead.

Del Greco came back with a 36-yard field goal for a 15-13 lead with 1:48 to play, and on the Titan sideline, veteran offensive lineman Bruce Matthews said he was “wondering who we were going to play next in the playoffs.”

But back came Johnson, as Phillips had anticipated, and with 16 seconds to play, it appeared Buffalo was on the way to this weekend’s divisional playoff round.

“We thought if we kicked the field goal they wouldn’t have another shot,” said Johnson, who completed 10 of 22 passes for 131 yards. “But we probably shouldn’t have done that.”

Johnson said he and Flutie found themselves in the shower afterward second-guessing the decision to kick the field goal rather than run more time off the clock before killing it with a spiked pass.

“That’s what Doug was talking about, but you don’t think about that [on the field],” Johnson said. “But the thing is, we should have won that game.”

That’s what the Titans, formerly known as the Oilers, were thinking when they trudged off the field in 1993.

“People are asking me, ‘Does this win soothe the pain of losing a 32-point lead in the 1993 playoffs against Buffalo?’ ” Matthews said. “For me, yes, it does. And I can almost sense the elation they must have felt coming from behind by 32 points. We did ours in 13 seconds on the next-to-final play of the game. Truly amazing. I have never been a part of anything like this.”

THE RULE

Backward Pass: A runner may pass the ball backward at any time. A pass parallel to the line is a backward pass.

--From the NFL rule book

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THE REFEREE

“The line judge’s initial ruling was that it was not a forward pass. Taking from where the pass left the passer’s hand right on that (25) yard line, the receiver catches it right there on that yard line. It did not appear to be a forward pass, therefore there is not a foul.”

--PHIL LUCKETT