Vikings K Will Reichard asks the NFL to go one step further after missing a call that could come back to bite him
Getting the NFL to admit their mistake is a win, but it should have been better.
The Minnesota Vikings have a long road trip in Europe when they played the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cleveland Browns in back-to-back weeks. There were some tough moments for the Vikings, but one of the biggest ones came in the fourth quarter this past Sunday in London.
Kicker Will Reichard missed his first kick of the season on a 52-yard field goal. It had a very weird trajectory initially, and many opined that it had hit the skycam cable. Nothing was acknowledged during the game, nor was there any discussion or review on the field.
Will Reichard Facts
- Played his college football at the University of Alabama
- Selected by the Minnesota Vikings in the sixth round of the 2024 NFL Draft at 203rd overall
- Made all 38 extra points and 24/30 field goals in his rookie season
NFL admits mistake on Will Reichard’s field goal and won’t do anything about it
This is a tough one to parse out on many levels. Whenever a kick hits the skycam cable, the play is supposed to stop and be restarted because of outside interference. That didn’t happen.
Sources told The Star Tribune’s Ben Goessling and Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio that they didn’t have the view on camera to definitively say that it hit the cable.
Insider Jordan Schultz reported on Saturday night that both Reichard’s agents and the Vikings’ front office asked to have his missed field goal taken off the record books, but that hasn’t happened. However, they gave the Vikings something that we haven’t seen in some time: the league acknowledged its own mistake.
It’s not quite enough to get the league to admit their mistake on the play, but it’s better than nothing. You can see in both clips that the ball takes a different trajectory once it comes near the cable. Both parties asking the league to take away the missed kick since it would have been disallowed is a fair ask. It also makes sense that the league didn’t do so because the game is already done.
The hope is that this issue is fixed, so it doesn’t happen again, with a new camera potentially installed.
