'Monday Night Football' gets weird after Richard Sherman not called for roughing kicker

It’s a good thing ESPN has former referee Gerry Austin in the booth on “Monday Night Football” to explain the rules, because there was an absolutely batty sequence of events to end the first half in Seattle.

It started innocently enough, with Buffalo Bills kicker Dan Carpenter lining up for a field goal with three seconds left in the first half. Then everything went crazy.

Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman jumped offsides, and the play was whistled dead. But Sherman and Carpenter kept going. Sherman dove for the block and crashed into Carpenter on his follow-through. Carpenter drew upon his acting skills and perhaps some background as a soccer player to writhe on the ground in apparent pain, holding his knee. Then he popped up like nothing happened, thinking he had a roughing the kicker penalty coming.

But, no. There was no call on Sherman for roughing, which seemed crazy. Officials are throwing flags like they’re getting paid per penalty call this season, but that wasn’t roughing? Huh.

ESPN sideline reporter Lisa Salters said she talked to Bills coach Ryan at halftime and the officials told him simply that it wasn’t roughing. Even though Sherman went right into Carpenter’s kicking leg.

And on top of it, because Carpenter was rolling on the ground in “pain,” that brought the Bills’ trainers out. The Bills had no timeouts left, and the rule is that an injured player has to miss the next play. It’s hard to kick a field goal without your kicker, but Carpenter had to come out. And it made the non-call even worse, because if Carpenter was hurt on a penalized hit he could have stayed in the game. NFL vice president of officiating Dean Blandino said it could have been called unnecessary roughness.

Bills players thought the hit by Sherman was dirty, Salters reported. She said linebacker Jerry Hughes said he thought Sherman should be ejected and running back LeSean McCoy said it was a dirty hit and he’d never seen anything like it before.

Upon the referee’s announcement to sort out the penalties and that Carpenter needed to come out, players started leaving the field, believing there would be a 10-second runoff. That wasn’t the case because the clock was stopped before the play.

“The half is not over!” referee Walt Anderson said, using his microphone to scold the players, like the situation needed to get weirder. “The half is not over, there’s three seconds on the clock!”

The entire fiasco made Ryan erupt in anger, before someone on Buffalo’s sideline had an epiphany. The Bills had three seconds, enough time to spike the ball. That would count as one play for Carpenter to miss, so he could come back and kick the field goal. Brilliant! So the Bills spiked the ball, with their field-goal team on the field. And with one second left, after having missed a play, Carpenter came back on for a field goal.

And then – like the situation needed to get weirder – the Bills were called for a delay of game penalty. It’s really rare to see a delay penalty on a field-goal attempt; it’s not like a play needs to be called. Part of the problem was the officials were standing over the ball until only a few seconds remained on the play clock. And then, backed up five yards because of the penalty, Carpenter kicked it … and it knuckled and veered right, missing my what looked like a few feet.

At least anyone watching the end of the first half of “Monday Night Football” can claim they saw a sequence they had never seen before. And hopefully they will never see a repeat of it.

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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdown.corner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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