The Denver Broncos were robbed by the officials against the Bears

The Denver Broncos are 0-2 on Monday, and nothing is going to change that, but the team has every right to be upset with the officiating.

In the NFL, I’m sure you could find ways to blame the officials for every close loss. The reality is, if you make enough plays over the course of a game, you shouldn’t have to worry about the officiating.

Bad calls go both ways all throughout pretty much every game, and even though some are more one-sided than others, teams usually just have to deal with the balance of favorable calls and not-so-favorable ones.

No one is going to dispute that here, but it’s not debatable that the Denver Broncos were absolutely robbed against the Chicago Bears on Sunday afternoon after they put together a miraculous fourth-quarter drive filled with fourth-down conversions, a ridiculous touchdown catch, and a two-point conversion.

The Broncos needed only to stop Mitch Trubisky and the Bears’ offense from getting into field goal range with 31 seconds left in the game, and the Bears were put in prime position after an ill-timed roughing the passer penalty called on Bradley Chubb.

But despite the roughing the passer call, the Broncos had the Bears in a 4th-and-15 spot. As was typical throughout the game, the Broncos struggled to get a decent pass rush on Trubisky, who took eight of the final nine seconds remaining to scan the field, step up in the pocket, and fire off a pass to Allen Robinson, who gave himself up almost immediately and was touched down by Chris Harris Jr. with one second remaining.

As many times as I have re-watched the play, it’s clear that Robinson’s knee is down when Harris is touching him, but let’s examine whether or not that even matters.

It doesn’t.

The final second on the clock ran off, but the Bears were somehow granted a timeout with one second remaining. I have been watching football for a long time and I can’t recall a situation like this. Lag time is accounted for in 100 percent of the other similar situations I have seen.

We see this all the time when field goals go through the uprights and after the ball hits the net, the clock trickles down another second. When a quarterback spikes the ball and it looks like there’s still an extra second on the clock, another one always comes off.

As a matter of fact, there have been plenty of situations like this one where a player has given themselves up, gotten touched by a defender, and the game clock continued to tick down before a coach was able to get a timeout in.

With one second left and no whistle blown indicating the play was dead, the officials — who didn’t go to the booth to review the situation at all — declared the Bears had accomplished all of the following:

• Getting a dead ball spot where Allen Robinson gave himself up
• Getting a timeout called in when the player gave himself up, not when the play was considered dead by the official’s whistle.

As previously stated, I can never remember seeing something like this in the NFL. In college, when you’re down, the clock stops, and doesn’t reset until the ball is spotted after a first down. That isn’t the case in the NFL, though. The clock continues running and doesn’t stop when a player is down.

In order for the Bears to accomplish what they did on Sunday, Robinson would have needed to get down with 0:02 left on the game clock, the play blown dead at 0:01, and the timeout promptly called.

When a player goes down to the ground with 0:01, the lag time of the play puts the clock at 0:00. That’s how it should be, and the Broncos have every right to be furious about it. Vic Fangio talked about it to the media on Monday afternoon.

The simple solution to not having things like this happen is to just ‘play better’ but the Broncos — or any team in the league, for that matter — doesn’t always have that luxury. When Vic Fangio talks about death by inches, there are certain ‘inches’ out of his and the Broncos’ control.

The Bears should have never had the chance to kick that field goal but they did anyway. I’m even fine with calling the roughing the passer penalties a wash throughout the game, as the Bears had a questionable hit on the quarterback called a personal foul. Even if you consider those both to be weak penalty calls, the situation at the end of the game was handled atrociously by the officials and it cost the Broncos what would have otherwise been a victory.

Sure, the Broncos scored only 14 points, but they put together an impressive drive with no timeouts at the end of the game, converting multiple fourth-down plays on their way to a touchdown followed by a two-point conversion against one of the best defenses in the league.

Although 14 points is rarely enough to win an NFL game, it’s more than the Packers scored against the Bears in their week one win. It’s more than six teams — including the eventual NFC Champion Los Angeles Rams — scored against the Bears in games last season.

It’s way too easy just to declare the Broncos didn’t play well and they should have scored more points if they wanted to win. That’s true, but it’s also true that they were jobbed by the officials and still should have won this game regardless of penalties.