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Late in the third quarter of Sunday's Chiefs-Raiders game, Brady Quinn was animatedly calling for the snap on the Raiders 4-yard line but Ryan Lilja, the center, didn't snap the ball before the play clock ran out.
Delay of game.
4th-and-9. The Chiefs gain one yard. Raiders ball.
Ugh. Very Chiefs-like possession.
The TV cameras caught Quinn and Lilja apparently arguing about the play. We offered up some ideas on they could've been arguing about right here. I was rooting for No. 4, but it appears it was just a case of miscommunication.
"We had a double-silent count," Crennel said of the snap, "so Quinn wanted him to snap it quickly because he saw the time was running down, and Lilja was operating on the double timetable. So, he looked back at him and looked up and then looked back again, and then by the time we snapped it, the clock had run out."
"He couldn't hear me obviously," Quinn said. "It's loud down there. It's part of the game. We're trying to get a look at what the possible coverage was going to be, the clock is running low. It was low pretty quick. Looking back on it, they should've wound it back or they might've set it pretty soon for whatever reason. It just seemed like all of a sudden there was 10 seconds left on the clock and that's pretty uncharacteristic of our offense."
Referee mistake costing the Chiefs a shutout?!?
Unfortunately, no.
The Chiefs lost fair and square. I went back and watched the game on NFL Rewind and timed it out. I had it at about 39 seconds, so I'm assuming I was just a little off.
Or the Raiders were just a little off. That sounds better.