The Chicago Bears were headed to the locker room, and the Detroit Lions waved them back onto the field.
The Lions benefitted from a 10-second clock runoff late in the first half of Sunday’s 52-21 win at Ford Field — eight years after they fell victim to one in the same end zone against the Atlanta Falcons.
Jared Goff threw a 4-yard touchdown pass to Amon-Ra St. Brown with 2 seconds left in the half, after the Lions likely received an extra play thanks to an officiating error.
The touchdown gave the Lions a 28-14 halftime lead and was the start of a string of 24 unanswered points.
“That was big that we were able to apply a lot of pressure right before halftime, knowing they were getting the ball coming out,” Lions coach Dan 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.”
The Lions led by seven points late in the first half when Isaac TeSlaa made a leaping one-handed catch along the sideline with 16 seconds to play.
Field judge Jabir Walker ruled TeSlaa out of bounds and waved for the clock to stop, but the clock continued to run and Goff hustled the Lions to the line of scrimmage and spiked the ball as the clock hit zero.
The Bears headed to the locker room as officials convened to discuss the play, before they were summoned back by Lions players and referee Land Clark.
Mark Butterworth, NFL vice president of instant replay, said in a pool report TeSlaa was determined to be down by contact in bounds by replay, which necessitated the clock being reset and the 10-second runoff.
“They ruled that it was a completed catch with the receiver out of bounds,” Butterworth said. “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.”
After the runoff, the Lions had first-and-goal at the Bears’ 4-yard line with 6 second on the clock. Campbell said he never considered kicking a field goal.
“I had the official right next to me throughout that process,” Bears coach Ben Johnson said. “He told me it was halftime, so we went in for halftime. Land 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. We’ll see what it looks like on the game tape – certainly was not communicated to us.”
In 2017, the Lions lost to the Falcons, 30-26, when Golden Tate had an apparent game-winning touchdown catch overturned on replay after he was deemed just short of the goal line.
The Lions did not have any timeouts left and the 10-second runoff killed the final 8 or 9 seconds off the game clock.
