The Touchdown Was Not Scored On Fifth Down

There can sometimes be a weird disconnect between what people in the pressbox notice and what people watching at home notice. The TV broadcast will highlight something -- say, a shouting match on the sidelines, or a random player standing isolated by himself while his position group appears to have a meeting nearby -- that can go entirely unnoticed by the assembled media. That wasn't the case with the Redskins final drive of today's game: the FOX tv coverage and the people keeping stats in the pressbox all seemed pretty sure that the almost-kinda-sorta tying touchdown took place on fifth down. (Or, to be more accurate, a second fourth down.) That wasn't the case. It was a fourth-down conversion, not a fifth-down conversion, and the confusion stemmed from a couple of specific events. The problem, it turned out, was somewhat procedural and somewhat mechanical. Head referee Pete Morelli explained in a statement to a pool reporter that one of the two "boxes" -- t...