- Joe, would you agree that officials
or referees in sports in general
really don't like being made to look stupid?
- Come on, of course, man.
- Right.
- [Joe] That ego that they have.
- Some of them
do have an ego. - They study this rule book
for so many years,
but, like, imagine them being proved wrong.
- Right. - They don't like that.
- If you do that, it kinda, like,
the whole integrity of the game starts to like fall apart.
- Yeah, exactly.
- And they don't like arguing about this kind of stuff.
- No, the integrity. - Yeah.
- [Both] The integrity of the game!
- [Ryan] You wouldn't want to go into a courtroom
and start clownin' on the judge.
- [Joe] That just sounds like a terrible idea.
- That would not be a good result.
This is definitely true in the NFL.
We're seeing this now with the whole,
like, being able review to pass interference,
which is just great.
- The NFL is just one of those leagues where it's just like,
you know, what let's just strip all the fun.
Anyways, lets protect the shield.
- [Ryan] We gotta protect the shields
with a 2000 page rule book.
- [Joe] Uh huh.
- [Ryan] They're literally putting a giant brick
of a rule book in front of the shield
to protect it from God knows what.
What if I told you that the NFL actually has a rule
where if you do end up even inadvertently making
the officials look stupid, you get penalized.
- Then I would not be shocked
whatsoever. - Not whatsoever, right?
So, it comes down to consecutive time-outs.
You can't have consecutive time-outs
in the same dead ball period.
Meaning, that there's like no play
happening on the field, right?
I call a time-out to stop the clock,
you can call a time-out as my opponent if you want,
but I can't then call another time-out for any reason.
A scenario where you might do this,
for instance, is if you call a time-out
to stop the clock and then before the next play,
you realize you have too many men on the field.
And you don't want the play from happening
'cause, if they snap the ball,
you'll get penalized for having to many men, right?
- I mean, it's a smart thing to do.
Just call another time out.
- Call another time out, right?
- Don't risk the penalty.
- Don't risk the penalty on the time-out.
What's supposed to happen in that scenario
is the officials just go,
oh, I know you've just called a time-out
and so I'm waving you.
Like it just gets canceled.
There's no real penalty for it.
- It's kinda just like, shoo you away.
- They kinda give you the hand, yeah.
They say, like, talk to the hand.
- Back to your sidelines.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But in a scenario where they don't do that,
and you do get the time-out,
well now it's a little tricky, right?
'Cause you've already stopped the game.
Now you've affected the game in like a real tangible way.
So this actually happened once.
Pete Carroll did the exact scenario I just describe to you
in a game when he was coaching
the Seahawks against the Cowboys.
- Sneaky Pete.
He's always getting away
with these tricks. - [Joe] Sneaky Pete.
- He calls a time-out to stop the clock,
then before the next play happens he realizes,
oh, I have 12 guys on the field,
I better stop the clock.
Don't want a penalty for having 12 guys on the field.
Let's get that 12th guy off the field.
Well, he got it.
He was supposed to just get waved off
and get the penalty for having too many guys.
But the officials for what ever reason,
gave him that second time-out.
- They stopped the clock, called the time-out?
- They, sure, they kept the play from happening.
And, now it's like,
oh okay, well, this is a little bit of a tricky scenario.
'Cause, you got one over on us.
You broke the rules and we gave you the extra time-out,
but there's nothing we can do to like, undo our mistake.
- So, this is my thing, though.
In Pete's head, did he know that there's a rule
about the second time-out thing?
'Cause, if you see 12 players on the field,
you kinda just gotta be like,
alright, let me call this time-out
'cause, I don't wanna get that penalty.
Or was he like, let me pull one over on the refs.
- Yeah.
- I may do this, they don't know there's a rule.
Like, I don't know there's a rule, is there a rule?
Let me just call a time-out, I don't know.
- I think the Pete Carroll explanation would be,
I was in the moment, I just didn't know.
I think in Pete Carroll's mind space, he maybe knew,
I know there's no penalty for doing this if it works.
- [Joe] Let me roll the dice.
- [Ryan] Let's roll the dice.
- [Joe] Let's roll the dice, baby!
- [Ryan] Ol' Sneaky Pete.
But because of that game,
the following season, they were like,
okay, if you do this and you get away with it,
you get a five-yard penalty.
'Cause you have like, changed the game
in some demonstrable way even though we messed up.
It's actually a little bit of an expansion on another rule
where you would also get penalized for doing that
while you were icing the kicker, right?
Classic move, you got a guy whose going up for a field goal,
you call time-out while he's taking the kick
and he's gotta do it again.
We all love the classic icing of the kicker.
- Icing the kicker.
- We love it.
- It's a part of the game.
It's a tradition.
- So, if you call a time-out to ice a kicker,
you can't just do it again.
You can't ice them a second time
in the same dead ball period.
Because then, you would be able to do it a third time
and shit would take forever.
- [Joe] You can't double ice.
- [Ryan] You can't double ice, right.
- [Joe] You can't add crushed ice
onto the already normal ice.
- [Ryan] No, no, no, no, no,
that's ridiculous. - C'mon,
the kicker needs some time, right?
- He needs some time to thaw out.
For a long time, if you tried to do that,
again, the referees were just supposed to say,
no, thank you.
But, if you get away with it,
now you've had an affect on the game,
you must be punished.
So for a long time the rule book said,
if you do that and you get away with it,
that's a 15-yard penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct.
- Wow.
- Yeah, bigger deal.
And it has actually been enforced one time in NFL history.
It was the Bills against the Washington Redskins
in 2007. - That sounds like
a terrible game.
Sounds like a terrible game. - I'm sure it was
an awful game.
Well it was, the Bills were down 15 to 17
with like eight seconds left to go.
- Ooh, at least it's close.
- So it was a little close.
And they have the ball.
So, of course, they're gonna go
for a game-winning field goal.
It's a 51-yard attempt, though,
so it's kinda long.
The Redskins coach at the time, Joe Gibbs,
he ices Lindell, the kicker for the Bills.
Bills get up to go do it again and he ices them again.
And for whatever reason,
the officials were not paying attention,
they got distracted by a bird or something, who knows.
They give him the second time-out and ice the guy again.
Then they realized, oh, you can't do that.
15-yard penalty,
which now makes this game-winning field goal attempt
36-yards rather than 51.
And so, in a very un-Bills-like moment,
they end up making this new, shorter attempt,
and they win 18 to 17 in the last few seconds of the game.
- So, real. - Wow.
Real world consequences for like trying to pull one over.
The refs really don't like being made to look stupid.
- You think the try to pick on
specific refs in that moment, though?
- Oh, 100%
If you know a guy is particularly sleepy behind the wheel,
you're definitely gonna start calling out time-outs
if and when you can get them.
- [Joe] Imagine Ed Hochuli, right?
RIP.
Well, he's not dead, but.
(Ryan laughs)
So imagine trying pull one over on big ol' Ed.
- Yeah, first of all, I wouldn't want to
'cause I'd be more afraid
that he's just gonna crush my head like a watermelon.
- [Joe] Exactly, right?
- [Ryan] 'Cause he's got those huge pythons, right?
- So, you gotta look at the ref and be like,
I can definitely get one on this guy.
- Well, now there's a rule in place
and thank God we're just adding
more ways to review these rules
and adding more time to the game.
Because without it, it would be madness.
It'd be the Wild West, you know what I'm sayin'?
- You gotta see those Doritos commercials somehow, right?
- Right, we need more Doritos.
Hey man, Dilly Dilly.
- Dilly Dilly, man!