Inadvertent whistle proves costly to Patriots in Monday night game vs. Bills

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — There's nothing like an officiating controversy to make a Bill Belichick-Rex Ryan game a little spicier.

But an inadvertent whistle wiped out a huge gain — potentially a touchdown — confusing New England Patriots players, coaches and fans at Gillette Stadium on Monday night in their game against the Buffalo Bills.

On a first-and-10 early in the third quarter, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady took the snap and rolled out to his right. He lofted a pass to Danny Amendola, who hauled in the completion and had plenty of room to run.

However one official from referee Gene Steratore’s crew, line judge Gary Arthur, blew his whistle inadvertently. By rule, the play was called dead at the spot of the catch, giving Amendola a 14-yard gain.

“It’s just one of those plays. I don’t really know what happened,” Brady said, summarizing the play. “I wish we could’ve converted it into more points.”

Replays clearly showed that neither Brady nor Amendola had stepped out of bounds.

“That’s one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen,” Bills running back LeSean McCoy said. “As a player, they teach you to play to the whistle. You hear the whistle and instantly, you stop. Everybody stopped. That’s the reason why we didn’t hit Brady. So for them to give the (Patriots) the spot, that was just crazy.”

The timing of the whistle was also instrumental in the decision to rule the play dead.

“If the ball would have been in the air (when the whistle blew), we would have gone back to the previous spot,” Steratore said, according to a pool report provided after the game.

“In our judgment, we thought the whistle came a little later after the ball was thrown, so we felt that the receiver had possession at the time of the whistle.”

Ryan, coach of the Bills, was also flagged for a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on the play.

“Once it did happen, the crew, I thought, did a good job of handling where they were going to put the football, because both teams are affected by the whistle blowing,” NFL vice president of officiating Dean Blandino said on NFL Network. “Both teams stopped, so we can’t assume what would have happened, so we gave the ball to the Patriots at the spot of the catch and enforced the penalty from there.”

Fans here were quick to boo and express their displeasure with the call, which proved to costly to New England as Patriots kicker Stephen Gostkowski missed a 54-yard field goal attempt four plays later.

Said Belichick: “It is what it is.”

Making matters worse for New England, the Bills took advantage of the short field and tied the game 10-10 a short time later on McCoy’s 27-yard run.

In the end, however, it didn’t cost the Patriots the game, as they scored 10 unanswered points in the third quarter before winning the game 20-13.

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Follow Lorenzo Reyes on Twitter @LorenzoGReyes

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