Poor Danny Davis. He committed a huge fumble. He lost his footing on a pass route. He had a terrible fourth quarter which hurt the Wisconsin Badgers in their 28-27 Rose Bowl loss to the Oregon Ducks. However, Davis was also unfairly flagged for offensive pass interference on a late third-down completion by Jack Coan inside the final four minutes of regulation. If that completion had stood, Wisconsin would have needed only 25 yards to get into long field goal range, and only 35 yards to get in manageable field goal range. The call was a gigantic one, and it was very plainly wrong.
It is something officials do need to look for: pick plays, in which a receiver picks off a defender by actively impeding the defensive player’s progress and obstructing the defender’s lane to the play. Some people still think today that when Clemson beat Alabama in the 2016 season’s national championship game, the Tigers ran a pick play at the goal line on the winning touchdown pass in the final seconds. If you have followed football long enough, you have seen pick-play calls decide games, one being the Notre Dame-Florida State regular-season game from 2014.
You can very plainly see in the video above that the Notre Dame receiver immediately starts driving the Florida State defender up the field, which can be construed as a block on a forward pass caught beyond the line of scrimmage. That is a pick play and pass interference. A receiver can’t bump or shove or initiate contact with the defender in various other ways.
Danny Davis didn’t do that. The Oregon defender jammed him and then held his jersey on or near the shoulders. Davis might have been on the verge of committing a pick play, but the Oregon defender jammed him and prevented a pick from being called. As soon as the Oregon defender initiated contact, the act of picking off the defensive player became an impossibility by rule. Davis was the recipient of contact, not the creator of it.
This was a relatively uncomplicated call, if only because Davis was clearly not the aggressor. Yet, the officials botched it.
“I know a pick play. A pick play is a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no pick play.” If this was a presidential debate, that’s what Wisconsin fans would be saying about that atrocious call near the end of the Rose Bowl.