Patriots benefit from ridiculously bad call on Josh Jacobs fumble

Of course Jon Gruden was on the other end of a bad fumble call in Foxboro. 

While some things change, others stay the same. Gone are the Patriots of old but the calls that those Patriots used to get seem to have stuck around.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the New England Patriots were the beneficiaries of a horrible call by the officials. In the first quarter of Sunday’s game, Josh Jacobs appeared to have fumbled the ball after his knees hit the ground — which wouldn’t be a fumble at all.

But that’s not what the officials saw.

Take a nice long look at this play and realize that Jacobs was apparently not down and the Patriots were awarded the ball.

This is where we mention that the last time Jon Gruden coached a Raiders team in Foxboro, it birthed in the infamous Tuck Rule. Very much the inverse of the Jacobs play, Tom Brady appeared to have fumbled what would have been a game-clinching turnover for the Raiders but it was determined that he was in the motion of passing the ball.

The Tuck Rule, as it was named later, gave the Patriots possession of the ball and allowed for a game-winning drive. The rest is history.

This fumble was not that, but it’s hard to disassociate the Raiders being on the bad end of a fumble call from that historic sliding doors moment in NFL history. Is Jon Gruden even coaching the Raiders in this game or is he off in retirement after winning multiple Super Bowls? Did the Raiders travel from Oakland and not Vegas because their dynasty in the Aughts allowed the team to find a way to build a stadium in the Bay Area?

We’ll always have those questions, just the same way it seems no matter what version of the Patriots we see they’re always going to get calls.