The Colts won and the Dolphins lost, so I'm going with C) All of the Above.
Listen to what you said. "The ground can't cause [a] fumble." Ahhh, but the ground can and does cause incompletions. Possession rules on a pass reception are not the same as rules for fumbles (in which case possession is already achieved).
Also, a fumble cannot happen when possession never occurred according to the rules.
Oh, I also forgot to mention that the ground CAN cause a fumble, provided the ball carrier was not touched by a defender (i.e., "down by contact") as the ball carrier headed to the ground.
There's no rule that says the ground can't cause a fumble, it's just a dramatically oversimplified "rule of thumb" spouted off by lazy announcers. It's like how 6th grade teachers always say that you can't use double negatives, even though there's nothing grammatically wrong with it. It's not as if they do it for no good reason (see what I did there?
); it's a lot easier to come up with a "better safe than sorry" (incorrect) rule of thumb than it is to actually teach the intricacies of a sometimes difficult to grasp concept.There is a rule that says the second a player who has possession of the ball touches the ground as the result of contact by a player on the opposing team, he is down by contact and the play is immediately over. 99% of the time, when a player goes to the ground it is the result of contact, which means the play ends before the fumble occurs. In the event where a player goes to the ground without any contact and fumbles on impact, that's actually a fumble. I remember a Tampa Bay game a few years back where I was really incensed because Mike Alstott clearly fumbled, but since it was caused by the ground it wasn't called (he leaped high over a defender who was diving at his ankles, easily cleared the defender, but landed on his back and the ball popped out, but the refs called him down by contact. If he hadn't dropped the ball, they never would have whistled that play dead).Anyway, the "ground cannot cause a fumble" idea is not at all contrary to the rule on the books that in order to establish possession a receiver must maintain possession all the way to the ground. In fact, the "maintain possession to the ground" rule just further prevents any scenario where the ground might cause a fumble, since if a player falls to the ground and the ball pops out, that's an incompletion rather than a fumble (since possession was never established because he didn't maintain control all the way down).
I did see a far more bizarre game in Week 14 of 2002.The Steelers had a 422-47 advantage in total yardage and 24-3 advantage in first downs while keeping possession for nearly 40 minutes against the Texans.And they lost 24-6. Three defensive TDs.
I was actually going to mention that game. Aaron Glenn had two 60+ yard INT returns for scores. Unbelievable game. That was a really weird year for Pittsburgh- they actually had the first tie in well over a decade, iirc, earlier in the season against Atlanta. Another good one was my personal favorite game of all time: a 33-22 game between the St. Louis Rams and the Baltimore Ravens, and the best example of why scoring defense isn't the best measure of a defense. Despite the 55 combined points, the game was a huge defensive struggle (a "defensive shootout", if you will). The Ravens held the Rams to 2 yards per carry, 4 yards per pass attempt, and 120 total yards. They also forced 4 turnovers. Despite that, they still gave up 33 points, because their offense turned the ball over 7 times and their special teams gave up a long punt return. There were two St. Louis touchdown "drives" to start the game that went something like 50 total yards for the both of them, Adam Archuletta returned a fumble for a score, and then Wilkins kicked 4 FGs in the 4th quarter. Midway through the 3rd quarter, Marshall Faulk had negative rushing yards... and two TDs. Really an awesome game, and the perfect example of the whole "field position is fluid" concept.
