In the third quarter of Alabama-Texas, a key call deep in Alabama territory led to some serious confusion.
On third down, Texas appeared to sack Bryce Young in the endzone for what would have been a safety. However, Young was never down, so as he tried to throw the ball away, the Texas defense swarmed him, leading to multiple penalties.
The referees initially called two penalties on the play: targeting and roughing the passer. After reviewing the play to try and confirm targeting, the referee made two determinations: first, that there was no targeting on the play, and second, that he incorrectly called roughing the passer.
The roughing he meant was actually in tandem with the targeting, so when he took away targeting, it also meant he took away the roughing.
Therefore, the ruling on the play ended up being that Young was never down and successfully threw the ball away to avoid intentional grounding for an incomplete pass. There was no targeting, no roughing the passer and no safety, and Alabama would ultimately punt the ball away.
So after all that, on the stat sheet it will go down as an incomplete pass, despite everyone watching the game getting confused for a few minutes.
