Coughlin would have been upset if clock stopped to fix down mistake

The New York Giants win over the Washington Redskins on Sunday night will always be tainted by that officiating mistake. They marked it first down on the sideline when it was actually third down. NFL Vice President of Officiating Dean Blandino said that play should have been stopped to correct the mistake.

“In this situation where there is obvious confusion as to the status of the down, play should have been stopped prior to third down and the correct down communicated to both clubs,” Blandino said in a statement. “This should have occurred regardless of the fact that Washington had no timeouts and it was inside two minutes.”

Of course no one would have been happy with whatever happened. Giants head coach Tom Coughlin said he would have been upset if the clock was stopped.

“Let’s face it: They don’t have any timeouts, the clock is moving. That should have been straightened out in the first place, but it wasn’t,” Giants coach Tom Coughlin said, via NFL.com. “There’s a lot of things going on out there, and the referee allowed that the game would continue to play and then made the correction. We would have been upset had the clock been stopped, sure we would have. Not that it would have made a difference, but we would have.”