Detroit Lions: 10 Observations from Sunday’s loss to Green Bay

4. I won’t complain about the Marvin Jones no catch ruling…

Watching live, I thought there was no way that Marvin Jones kept his feet inbounds for what would have been a spectacular sideline grab at the one yard line. Even after seeing the replay for the first time, I thought that Darrell Bevell was wasting his challenge. Then they slowed it down even more, and took a freeze frame and… yeah, I still don’t know.

It was just so close, and as badly as I wanted it to be a catch, I still thought the video was inconclusive. Jones’s toes dragged along the field turf and kicked up those little pellets, and then one of his feet lifted up, and maybe it’s still grazing the turf a little when he catches the ball, but the the pellet dust makes the area around his foot kind of blurry, so maybe he doesn’t. It was a tough break, but a 50-50 call, probably more like 25-75 considering the call on the field was incomplete.

5. But I will complain about the third down defensive holding call.

With the score tied coming out of halftime, the Lions defense immediately made a 3rd down stop as Rodgers overthrew a receiver tangled up with Jahlani Tavai. As I’ve been conditioned to do through the years, I watched for a solid five or six extra seconds just to make sure there was no flag before celebrating. The broadcast team noticed nothing either, and talked about how the Packers were forced to punt, the Lions had made a big stop, etc, etc.

Defensive holding on Amani Oruwariye. Fresh set of downs for the Packers, Aaron Rodgers pulls out his bag of oranges and goes back to work. They never showed a replay or anything, so maybe Oruwariye held after all, who knows.

All in all, the Lions were called for only four penalties on the day while the Packers were called for twelve, so I’m not claiming anything beyond that–but man, that was a late flag.