On the opening offensive play of Sunday night’s Divisional Round playoff game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills, CBS Sports announcer Tony Romo made an interesting—and inaccurate—callback to one of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ all-time great plays.
The play involved a fumble by the Bills in which TE Dalton Kincaid batted the ball out of bounds to ensure it wouldn’t be recovered by the Chiefs. It was a heads-up play by Kincaid, but it received a penalty for illegal batting. The rule book states that you cannot bat the ball forward towards your opponent to advance the ball. This resulted in a 10-yard penalty on the Bills. Here is the play in question, posted by Rate the Refs on X.
While attempting to add color to the situation, Romo incorrectly placed blame on Franco Harris and the “Immaculate Reception.” What he meant to say was the “Holy Roller” play. To be fair to him, both plays did involve the Oakland Raiders, but it was still a clear mistake by Romo.
The “Holy Roller” was a controversial play back in 1978 in which QB Ken Stabler fumbled the ball forward. It was then batted further up the field by RB Pete Banaszak and TE Dave Casper before Casper ultimately recovered the ball in the end zone for a game-winning touchdown as the clock expired. The Raiders won the game 21-20. This sparked a rule change in the NFL which you can look at here on Football Zebras. And here is a video of the controversial play on NFL’s YouTube channel.
The “Immaculate Reception,” on the other hand, did not involve any batting of any fumbles footballs. Harris caught a deflected pass and ran into the end zone for a game-winning touchdown against the Raiders. The Steelers were trailing 7-6, but the famous play gave them the 13-6 win in the AFC Divisional Playoff game in 1972.
