John Harbaugh Hurled a Challenge Flag With All His Strength For Absolutely No

John Harbaugh had himself quite an entertaining day while on the sideline for the Baltimore Ravens’ home matchup against the Los Angeles Rams. In some dreary weather, Harbaugh got into the face of a Rams defender in defense of Zay Flowers in the first half. Early in the second half he was spotted emphatically explaining to a referee why he made the wrong call. And then, late in the fourth quarter with the game on the line, he threw a challenge flag with absolutely everything he had–for no reason.

Matthew Stafford marched the Rams down the field and ended up at the Ravens’ goal line down by one point. Stafford scrambled on second-and-goal and found DeMarcus Robinson in the back of the end zone for what appeared to be a straightforward touchdown. The refs signaled a touchdown and the Rams celebrated before lining up for the two-point conversion.

But before they could snap the ball, a challenge flag came flying in from out of the frame. Harbaugh was challenging … something from the touchdown. Nobody knew what it was at the moment but all were in awe of Harbaugh’s arm strength given coaches are required to hang out around the 20-yard line when there’s action at the goal line, so it was probably a 15-yard hurl with enough air underneath it to appear on the broadcast for multiple seconds.

As amusing as the throw was, it wasn’t enough to distract from what Harbaugh was actually doing. He threw the flag to challenge … the touchdown. If that feels weird to you, that’s because the NFL stopped allowing teams to challenge touchdowns over a decade ago. All scoring plays are reviewed by the officials upstairs. Throwing the challenge flag anyway just means your team loses a timeout. It’s been that way for a long time.

Harbaugh just … forgot, I guess? It was a one-score game with less than five minutes to go, so there’s no way he threw the flag to prove a point and didn’t care that it cost him a timeout. An NFL head coach is not supposed to forget that kind of thing, though, and even if he does he’s supposed to have at least a half-dozen people around him who are only there to tell him not to throw the flag in that situation.

It’s also a mystery as to what he was actually challenging. Robinson wasn’t anywhere near the boundary and obviously made a clean catch. Maybe Harbaugh wanted to challenge if Robinson stepped out of bounds in the back of the end zone before going to catch the touchdown, but again– this was reviewed by the referees.

A terrible decision and one that proved costly.