For as long as the game of football has been played, coaches, players and fans alike have had complaints about officiating. It's a tale as old as time. A rite of passage that everyone goes through at some point in their life.
More often than not, critiques of the the fellas in the striped shirts come following a loss, but in DeMeco Ryans' case, his problem with the officials in Sunday's game between the Denver Broncos and Houston Texans had nothing to do with the result of the game -- an 18-15 loss. It had to do with the safety of quarterback CJ Stroud, and the way that what had been called a penalty all of the sudden wasn't, despite the fact that Stroud was knocked out of the game.
On a 3rd-and-8 scramble, Stroud gave himself up on the play, sliding a couple of yards shy of the first down marker. But as Stroud slid, Broncos cornerback Kris Abrams-Draine came flying in and hit the third-year quarterback while he was already in sliding motion. Abrams-Draine was initially flagged for unnecessary roughness, but after the play was reviewed, the penalty was overturned since the officials claimed that the contact wasn't with Stroud's head or neck.
Understandably, Ryans chose to voice his discontent with the decision to pick up the flag during his post-game press conference.
"I see it as unnecessary roughness. He hit the quarterback when he was sliding and giving himself up. If I'm incorrect on the rules, I've seen that happen multiple times with our guys, and we get the penalty," Ryans said after the game, per DJ Bien-Aime of ESPN.com. "It's easy to stand up here and make excuses. Injuries happen all across the league all the time. You don't make excuses about who's in the game or who's not in the game. We still had an opportunity there to close the game out."
The Texans only led 3-0 at the time Stroud was knocked out of the game, but they would go on to build a 15-7 lead heading into the 4th quarter. With what has been the best defense in the National Football League this season, an 8-point buffer should've been enough to close things out. But Denver made enough plays in the final frame to come away with their sixth consecutive win this season.
"Every offense is going to miss their starting quarterback," Ryans said. "We want our starting quarterback in the game at any given time; that's why he's a starting quarterback. But it's no excuses. A lot of teams have won games with backup quarterbacks before, and we had our opportunity. We had our chance."
Stroud missed two games late in his rookie year after suffering a concussion on a similar play. The Texans split those two games to remain in the hunt for the AFC South title, but it wasn't Davis Mills filling in during Stroud's absence... it was veteran backup Case Keenum, who already had an 11-win season with the Minnesota Vikings under his belt. Mills hasn't had the same amount of reps, or success, as Keenum had when he stepped up.
Against the Broncos defense, Mills completed 17-of-30 passes for 137 yards, but Houston's offense as a whole couldn't get anything going in the 2nd half, finishing with just 87 yards of total offense in the final two quarters.