1. As expected, there was a LOT going on in Sunday’s AFC championship game with the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs. All the anarchy led to one confusing moment on the game’s biggest play.
With the Chiefs up 32–29 and two minutes left in regulation, the Bills had a fourth-and-5 from their 47-yard line.
This was the call from Jim Nantz on CBS:
“The whole season on the line for Buffalo here. Here they come. He just desperately throws it up in the air. Incomplete. Kincaid was right there. There is a flag.”
There was then nine seconds of silence between Nantz and Tony Romo before Romo said, “I didn’t see a flag thrown there.”
“I’m told there was a flag,” said Nantz.
Romo then started to analyze the play, with Nantz saying in the background, “No flag!”
So what the heck happened? Here’s what Nantz told me Monday morning.
“When you have flags on the field, they can be thrown in the secondary, in the offensive backfield, all over the place. So, there’s a spotter that works in coordination with the broadcast team.
“I’m just taking what information is passed along. I’m scanning the field and for the life of me I can’t find a flag. But the graphic is up and I’m told, which just part of the chain of communication, I’m told there’s a flag. The first thing you do when you’re told that is you scan the field and identify for your own edification. What are they looking at? Where did this take place? I couldn’t find it.”
Interestingly enough, Kevin Harlan and Devin McCourty, calling the game for Westwood One Radio, also said there was a flag on the play, with McCourty speculating that it was for Bills offensive lineman Dion Dawkins taking his helmet off.
I spoke to Harlan, as well, to get his side of the flag/no flag fiasco.
“When I’m doing the game for CBS, the officiating booth in the stadium will tell our truck immediately if there’s a flag,” said Harlan. “Then our producer would tell me flag even before sometimes it appears on the screen. We of course don’t have that luxury doing radio and we’re so high up and we’re just trying to survive play to play because our vantage point is really high and we’re trying to decipher what’s going on from a distance.
“So, naturally when I see it come up on our CBS scorebug at the bottom of the screen, I said flag. There are so many times a flag is thrown in the four corners of the field, you aren’t even looking there, but it’s thrown 20 yards dow field or five yards in the back of the line of scrimmage. A lot of times you scan it, but a lot of times you don’t see it. Even when we’re doing TV, you don’t see the flag. So, I have relied on TV when I’m doing CBS that the word coming from the officiating booth to our truck to me in the booth says a flag is down. Even if I don’t see it, I trust that process.”
I know we live in a time where everything is a conspiracy theory, but it sure sounds like a spotter just made a simple mistake and thought they saw a flag. Everyone who called the game said they did not see a flag, so clearly this was just an innocent error minus the confusion it led to with viewers.
2. Romo had a very strong performance in the AFC title game. He was all over the fact that Josh Allen always likes to run over the left guard when he does QB sneaks. Allen then repeatedly ran over the left guard while sneaking it and the Chiefs stopped him numerous times.
Romo was also very strong in calling the the Bills to run the ball with James Cook when the second half started. Buffalo came out and fed Cook on the entire drive and the result was a Cook touchdown.
Both Nantz and Romo were also all over the controversial fourth-down attempt by Buffalo that changed the game. Nantz pointed out how one official was giving the Bills a first down, while the other official was marking the ball short. Meanwhile, Romo didn’t hedge. He came out and said he thought Allen should’ve been given the first down.
3. If you’re a football fan, do yourself a favor today and just listen to these radio calls from Harlan. You simply cannot find a better NFL radio play-by-play voice than Harlan. I’ll give you a couple of his best calls here for your listening pleasure.
4. Fair is fair. I have said many, many times here and on SI Media With Jimmy Traina that the NFL rules analysts on TV should only be used to explain a rule the audience may not be familiar with. The rules analyst should not be used just to tell us what we all saw with our own eyes.
So, kudos to Fox’s Mike Periera, who told viewers, along with Kevin Burkhardt and Tom Brady, that the refs could reward the Eagles with a score if the Commanders continued to jump offsides on purpose.
In all my years watching football, I had never heard this explanation from a ref, so props to Periera for being all over it.
oh yeaaaaa this is just what we need pic.twitter.com/93OLoTqCUS
— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) January 26, 2025
5. I know I’m supposed to have a take on Brady’s performance in the Commanders-Eagles game. Everyone has to have a take on Brady for every single game he calls. It’s kind of exhausting. And I don’t have a take. The game got completely out of control late, so Brady didn’t have any big moments to sink his teeth into. I thought Brady was fine for the game. He wasn’t annoying, which is immensely important. He didn’t really say anything memorable. He was fine. That’s all I got on Brady.
6. The latest SI Media With Jimmy Traina features a conversation with ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio.
Topics covered include the significant ratings drop for the divisional round of the NFL playoffs, the latest regarding the league going to an 18-game schedule, Netflix’s involvement in the NFL, the narrative that the league and the refs want the Chiefs to win, the practice of having coaches interview for jobs with other teams while they are in the playoffs, what happened to Deion Sanders possibly becoming the Cowboys coach, Tom Brady’s conflict of interest in calling game for Fox while being one of the owners of the Raiders and much, much more.
You can listen to the SI Media With Jimmy Traina podcast below or on Apple and Spotify.
You can also watch SI Media With Jimmy Traina on Sports Illustrated‘s YouTube channel.
7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: We don’t have a football game this weekend, but we do have the Royal Rumble. The WWE event will take place this Saturday, so let’s get remember the very first Royal Rumble in 1988.
Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Google. You can also follow Jimmy on X and Instagram.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Jim Nantz Explains the Late Flag Mystery During Bills-Chiefs.
