Georgia Football: 4 worst officiating calls from SEC Championship Game

2.  1st Quarter: Roughing the Passer vs Jonathan Ledbetter

Somehow, that Holyfield call didn’t even make it into my top 2. That is how bad these other two calls were. In the second quarter, Jonathan Ledbetter is not exactly a pass rushing demon. However, he is a damn good lineman who pretty much made the perfect play on an attempted Auburn flea-flicker.

For some reason, the refs threw a flag on this play. Because apparently, you aren’t allowed to fall on a quarterback when you hit them. That’s now called ‘illegal use of body weight’. I have to be honest, that’s a new one even for me.

This call was basically a joke. What made it so bad was that Stidham committed a penalty as well. He threw the ball to a lineman because he was so scared of getting hit. But that was nullified by the phantom penalty the officials decided they saw.

This whole call stunk. It looked like they threw the flag, then saw the replay and realized, oh crap, the QB’s still holding onto the football, that’s legal. But of course, they couldn’t change their mind because that would be wrong, so instead, they said Ledbetter was being too rough and stuck by their decision.

This could have been a very costly penalty. Auburn was 7 points up at the time and after this, they drove down the field. Were it not for Davin Bellamy, UGA would have gone down 2 scores because the refs couldn’t admit that they were wrong and pick up the flag.