Rome Odunze’s dropped touchdown pass in the Bears game had plenty of people doing a double take, but the sequence before the drop is what really had folks talking.
Jalen Carter beat his man with a swim move and wound up on the turf after what looked like a shove from behind while he was trying to get to Case Keenum. The tight end made a little contact with him before peeling away to run a short route, but the bigger issue was the block that appeared to knock Carter off his path.
The question is whether that should have been flagged. It doesn’t look like holding, since nothing is being grabbed, but the NFL rulebook says, in section 12, article 3, “it is a foul if an offensive blocker” -
“Blocks an opponent (from behind) in the back above the opponent’s waist, or uses his hands or arms to push an opponent from behind in a manner that affects his movement, except in close-line play. This prohibition also applies to a player of the kicking team while the ball is in flight during a scrimmage kick.”
From the way it played out, this doesn’t seem like close-line play. Carter got free cleanly, was in pursuit of the quarterback, and the contact came several yards behind the line of scrimmage. The shove from the offensive lineman appeared to stop what should have been a sack.
And then came the odd little coda: Odunze dropped the touchdown pass. That led to the joking theory that maybe it was karma, that the Bears got away with one and then paid for it with the missed score.
Or maybe, as the theory went, Odunze saw the no-call and decided, “ I will drop this touchdown pass because it’s the right thing to do. “
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