The “defender” went for Rogers facemask twisted his head violently and followed him down to ground with his hand still on the facemask. Watch his black glove, that’s all you have to do. It wasn’t incidental or accidental.

Sandstone

In this instance, the defender was GOING FOR THE BALL. As their hand brushed the ball away, what was behind the ball was the face mask was. So you can’t call it a normal facemask. The defenders hand, after causing the fumble, had no place to go but the facemask.

However, the fact that once his hand hit the facemask, he did seem to just sort of hold onto to it was not a good thing. I think it is a mistake to look at the play as an automatic facemask since the facemask was an incidental result of swatting the ball away.

The ref could have called it a fumble, given the ball to Arizona, and then backed them up another 10 yards from the spot of the fumble because of the facemask.

However, then it could be argued that the facemask prevented the QB for trying to regain the ball after the fumble.

The fumble was totally legitimate and totally caused by the defender, it is unfortunate that everything that happened afterwards looks like a facemask and adds such a cloudy layer to an otherwise fine play.

One other thing that could have happened. Since the game can’t end on a defensive penalty, the refs, at the very least, could have ruled touchdown, but also ruled a penalty on the defense for facemasking after the fumble. This could have resulted in a one of a kind, here to for impossibility, a sudden death overtime game in which the scoring team hast to then kick off to the losing team because the assessed defensive penalty for one final play.

Now that would have put a final punctuation on a very exciting game