Lance Easley Recounts “Fail Mary” Call
By Mike Dyce
Replacement referee Lance Easley quickly disappeared from the spot light after his famous “touchception” or “fail mary” call in a Monday Night Football contest between the Seattle Seahawks and Green Bay Packers. The Seahawks who were the beneficiaries of the call have embraced it, ya… they won.
The Packers are still upset.
Cornerback Richard Sherman invited Easley to as charity softball game and even posed for a photo with Golden Tate.
“I wouldn’t change anything,” Easley said, via Pro Football Talk. “I can’t. The NFL upheld it. I’ve looked at plenty of video. I’ve talked to my replay guys, and there was nothing that could turn it over.
“It was just one of those calls that will live in NFL history.”
The pressure and scrutiny from NFL fans and the media particularly played a role in Easley’s call he said. He wanted to make a quick and clear call that made him look confident, afraid that talking it over would make them look more unsure, his partner having the opposite call though ruined his plan.
“If I regret anything I probably would have talked it over a little bit with my partner,” Easley said. “I thought he saw the same thing but because of the media and the way they were getting after us every week and the pressure, I thought to myself ‘OK, I know what I have. If we talk about it the media is going to crucify us like look at those idiots, they don’t know what they’re doing.’”
“When they both went up and started to come down I said ‘oh no, this is happening in front of 18 million people on TV on Monday night. Everybody’s watching this,’” Easley said.
One thing is certain. That play is incredibly rare, and you might never see a play like that again.
“I knew how bizarre the play was. I’d never seen it. I was confirmed by that by calling the NFL office the next morning and saying ‘have you seen this play before? No.’ Everybody, head coaches – I have not met anybody that’s said ‘oh yeah, I saw that play the other day’ or ‘I saw it in 1965, Bears vs. Vikings.’ Nobody has seen it. It’s not on TV, not on film, otherwise you would see it. Players, coaches, all of us fans, we know it’s never happened before so I just happened to be stuck in the middle of it,” Easley said.
“It probably will never happen again, just like the Immaculate Reception.”