The Pittsburgh Steelers almost pulled off an improbable comeback against the Minnesota Vikings on Thursday night, but one reason they weren't able to come away with a win is because they ran out of time.
The Steelers reached Minnesota's 12-yard line with just three seconds left to play in the game, which meant they had just one chance to score and after they were unable to punch it in, the Vikings ended up escaping with a 36-28 win.
Following the Steelers' loss, Chase Claypool was heavily criticized for a situation late in the game that appeared to cost the Steelers at least 10 seconds off the clock. However, it appears that the lost time wasn't Claypool's fault and that it was actually due to a sneaky play by Vikings linebacker Eric Kendricks that should have been penalized.
The Claypool drama started on a fourth-and-1 play with just 42 seconds left. To have any shot of winning, the Steelers needed to convert and they did that when Ben Roethlisberger hit Claypool for a 9-yard gain that took Pittsburgh down to Minnesota's 34-yard line.
The Steelers were out of timeouts, so they needed to get to the line as quickly as possible so they could spike the ball to stop the clock. Claypool got criticized because he celebrated the first down and after that celebration, it took 14 seconds from when he got tackled until the Steelers were able to get off their next snap. A tweet calling Claypool "clueless" had more than 6,500 retweets after the game.
However, as Claypool correctly pointed out after the game, the fact that the Steelers lost 14 seconds wasn't his fault.
In his postgame interview Claypool noted that the ball got knocked out of his hand and although it was unclear what he was talking about at the time, it's pretty clear now: Kendricks very casually swiped the ball from Claypool and then threw it behind his back, which you can see in the video below.
Here's a breakdown of what was happening on the clock during the situation.
First, Claypool got up and was trying to hand the ball to the ref, which came at the 33-second mark.
As you can see, the ref is basically standing on the hash mark, so once he had the ball, he would have just turned around, put the ball down, and the Steelers probably would have been able to snap it at about the 29- or 28-second mark, which would have saved them four or five pivotal seconds.
Due to the batted ball by Kendricks, the ref didn't get the ball until the 30-second mark AND he still had to run over to the hash mark to put it down.
Forget the five seconds that Kendricks cost the Steelers, though, because they actually should have saved even more time and that's because Kendricks probably should have been flagged for a defensive delay of game on the play. If that had happened, the clock would have stopped as soon as he batted the ball, which came at the 33-second mark.
If Kendricks had been penalized, the Steelers would have had a first-and-10 from Minnesota's 29 with 33 seconds left. Instead, they had to spike the ball, which left them with second-and-10 from Minnesota's 34 with 24 second left.
Claypool also made a point that his celebration didn't hurt the team because the ref wasn't there to take the ball from him after the play ended.
"I got tackled near the hash," Claypool said, via ESPN.com. "Did my little first-down point. Went to hand the ball to the ref. He just got there, so even if I got right up and looked for him, he wasn't there."
On one hand, Claypool's point makes sense. There was no ref to give the ball to, so it's not like he cost his team a ton of time. However, if Claypool had run straight to the ref instead of celebrating, he probably could have saved one or two seconds, but he definitely didn't cost his team eight to 10 seconds like some people on the internet seem to think.
That being said, Claypool did admit that he could have done things differently.
"I definitely do have to be better," Claypool said.
The Steelers receiver made a lot of mistakes in this game, including an early unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that caused him to be benched, but one thing that shouldn't be blamed on him is the end-of-game drama that ended up costing the Steelers more than 10 seconds.