How NFL's replay official at Sunday's Bears loss explained clock snafu

Pro Football Writers Association pool reporter Nolan Bianchi interviewed NFL vice president of instant replay Mark Butterworth about what transpired.

PFWA Question: What was initially called on the field and did two officials rule two different things (on the pass from Jared Goff to Isaac TeSlaa late in the second quarter)?

Mark Butterworth: "They ruled that it was a completed catch with the receiver out of bounds. The impact of that ruling is the clock stopped because they ruled him out of bounds. If they ruled him in bounds with the catch the clock would continue to run. We stopped the game through replay to confirm the catch, which we were able to do. We confirmed there was contact by the defense after he controlled the ball, and we had his leg in bounds prior to going out of bounds. Therefore, the clock should have continued to run. So, we reset the clock to the down by contact time and then ran 10 seconds."

PFWA Question: How did replay come to that decision?

Butterworth: “We used various angles and were able to confirm he completed the process of the catch. We used two different angles to show that the defender’s right arm did contact the receiver after he controlled the ball.”

PFWA Question: When the team with the ball is out of timeouts, is it obligatory to run 10 seconds off the clock after replay?

Butterworth: “Neither team can decline the 10-second run off, but they can take a team timeout to avoid the 10-second run off (The Lions had none left)."

Bears coach Ben Johnson had the Bears heading to the locker room under the impression the half ended with Detroit out of timeouts.

"Yeah, I had the official right next to me throughout that process," Johnson said. "He told me it was halftime, so we went in for halftime."

Obviously, they had to come back out for the TD pass.

"(Official) Land (Clark) came over to me at the end of the third quarter, and he told me they ruled it out of bounds, they reviewed it, and said he was in bounds, and so there was a 10-second runoff,"Johnson said.  "We’ll see what it looks like on the game tape – certainly was not communicated to us.”

Lions coach Dan Campbell was thanking his lucky stars they wound up with the clock stopped and then time to get off the pass.

"That was big that we were able to apply a lot of pressure right before halftime, knowing they were getting the ball (on the kickoff) coming out (in the second half)," Campbell said. "That was a big play.

"That whole thing was–they’re waving them out but then nobody is stopping the clock. So, we were fortunate that we got an opportunity to do it. I mean Goff and Saint (St. Brown) make it a huge play. It was great.”

It wouldn't be a Bears-Lions game without some sort of strange clock occurrence.

Irony of ironies, it was just last Thanksgiving when Matt Eberflus chose not to use his timeout at Detroit's Ford Field and the clock ran out on the Bears.

At halftime Sunday, the clock wouldn't run out for the Bears and they weren't too happy about it.

Would it have mattered considering the score? Maybe it just would have been 45-21. No one will ever know.