ALLEN PARK–After the dust settled last Sunday afternoon from the Lions’ heart breaking, last-second 30-26 loss to the Atlanta Falcons, Golden Tate retrieved his cell phone when he got back to the locker room. He found it filled with a mixture of congratulatory messages from when he scored what was then a game-winning touchdown, followed by ones of apology a few minutes after the scoring play was reviewed and overturned.
“For one, after the game, you can’t really unsend text messages,” Tate said on Wednesday. “I had a lot of people, ‘Oh my gosh, game winner, amazing go Lions, we love you guys.’ Then a moments later or minutes later, ‘Oh crap. I’m sorry. Well, dinner is on my next time.’ A lot of that happened.”
Just to refresh you on what happened, on third and goal with 12 seconds left, Tate caught a pass from Matthew Stafford and fell into the endzone for what looked like the go-ahead score, sending Ford Field into a frenzy. But after review, Tate’s touchdown was overturned and he was ruled down just shy of the endzone. And due to the 10-second runoff rule and only eight seconds remaining on the game clock, the game was ruled over even though the LIons had one more down.
Just like that, the Lions went from the euphoria of being undefeated at 3-0 and knocking off the defending NFC champions, to the disbelief of having a touchdown overturned with no chance to run a final play and falling to 2-1.
Was that one of the toughest losses of Tate’s career to get over and put behind him?
“Yeah, it was tough,” said Tate, who has 21 catches for 190 yards and one touchdown after three games. “But one thing, for me, that I’m working on this year is once I leave the locker room trying to be ok because it’s not fair to my wife, and my family and my friends for me to have an attitude the entire night when they’ve come miles and miles away to see us. I try to just breathe and let it go, put it all in perspective and just realize, hey, we have–after last week–13 more games, 13 more opportunities. Now, if it would’ve been the playoffs, that would’ve been a whole other story.”
Playoffs or not, knowing the circumstances of the gut-wrenching the loss to the Falcons, wouldn’t his friends and family have given him a free pass to be in a bad mood on Sunday?
“Yeah, maybe,” he answered. “But after I walked in the locker room, I was upset. I was in pain, but once I saw all of them, that made me feel better knowing I had friends and family here to support me no matter win, lose, draw, whatever it is. Spending time with them, It actually helped me get over it.”
Tate understands that “rules are rules,” he said. But the 10-second runoff rule is certainly one that he does not agree with.
“The referee saw it the way he saw it,” he said. “The only thing I would strongly disagree [with] and hopefully the league will look at it, is the whole 10-second runoff. We didn’t challenge the play, therefore we shouldn’t be penalized for it. In that case it was our own 1/2-yard line and we should’ve had one second left, or actually we should’ve had eight seconds left. Whatever it is.
“We didn’t even get a chance. We didn’t get a shot to do anything. It was just like, ‘Ok, all touchdowns are reviewed if they don’t call it a touchdown, you did catch it, 10-second runoff, ball game.’ That sucks. And it seems like the Lions are always the ones that are on the wrong side of success with that [calls like the one in the Falcons game]. Hopefully they get it fixed. We’ll see.”