Walt Anderson's review of crazy two-point play glossed over the delayed review

Former NFL referee Walt Anderson now serves as the league's primary (and only) spokesperson regarding the application of the rules. Every Sunday morning, he gets very limited real estate in a four-hour NFL Network pregame show to address any/all controversial calls from the week that was.

This week, there were several candidates. The league admitted to the Panthers that a fourth-quarter catch was incorrectly overturned by replay review. Chargers safety Tony Jefferson was ejected for an illegal helmet-to-helmet hit on Sunday against the Chiefs, but Bears defensive end Austin Booker was not ejected for an illegal helmet-to-helmet hit that knocked Packers quarterback Jordan Love out of the game. Why was one player sent to the showers when the other one wasn't?

Sunday's Walt Anderson cameo focused exclusively on the most unusual play from the past seven days: The two-point conversion from Thursday night, which tied Seahawks-Rams at 30. During his three-minute segment, Anderson explained the fairly obvious elements that anyone who would be watching NFL Network in the 9:00 a.m. ET hour on a Sunday already knew.

One key point was glossed over. If it was so obvious that Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold had thrown a backward pass that pinballed into the end zone and remained live, why did it take more than 100 seconds to initiate the review?

There's a story there. An interesting one. One they likely don't want anyone to know. Who figured out that the play should be formally reviewed during the 100-second interval between the end of the play and the announcement of the review? Was it the replay official? Was it someone from the league office? Did someone from outside the bubble but with access to it flag an issue that otherwise would have gone unnoticed?

The teams were lined up for the kickoff. The game was about to proceed. The play that became a clear and obvious two-point conversion was not sufficiently clear and obvious to trigger an instant decision to review the play.

There's another important point to make, based on something Anderson didn't say. Two weeks ago, when he addressed the erroneous intentional grounding call from Broncos-Commanders, Anderson explained that the mistake isn't currently subject to replay review - and he advocated for a change to the rule. Since then, it has been reported that potential 2026 expansions to the replay process include the question of whether an eligible receiver was outside the numbers when a ball is overthrown in his direction.

On Sunday, Anderson said nothing about a potential change to the backward pass rule. Which tends to confirm the notion that a change won't be made, even though Rams coach Sean McVay has said he wants one.