Bears TE Zach Miller suffers gruesome injury and has TD taken away on same play

Frank Schwab
·NFL writer
It was ultimately ruled that Bears tight end Zach Miller didn't come down with this catch for a touchdown against the Saints. (AP)
It was ultimately ruled that Bears tight end Zach Miller didn’t come down with this catch for a touchdown against the Saints. (AP)

When a player suffers a horrible injury, television networks stop showing the replay. Sometimes they let it go once, often when they seemingly don’t realize what happened until they’re seeing the replay themselves, but then they cut it off.

We found out what happens when a gory injury happens on a play that needs to be reviewed to see if it’s a touchdown, and it wasn’t too fun.

Chicago Bears tight end Zach Miller came down with a touchdown catch against the New Orleans Saints, and when his left leg landed it buckled. Badly, to the point where he dislocated his knee, It was a stomach-turning injury, but the (small) consolation was that Miller came down with a touchdown.

But all scoring plays are reviewed, and as usual in the NFL, there was a debate if Miller completed the catch. It was very close, so the replay had to be viewed … over and over. Fox had former head of officiating Dean Blandino on a split screen talking about the call as the play was shown more times. And every time, while everyone was supposed to be checking if the Bears had scored a touchdown or it was an incomplete pass, it was impossible to miss Miller’s leg injury.

Even in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, it was played repeatedly on the video boards.

The Bears didn’t seem thrilled by all the replays inside the dome.

“I think it’s disrespectful of the saints to show that replay like 50 times inside the stadium,” Bears receiver Kendall Wright said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

And then, as Miller was on the ground and being looked at by the trainers, officials announced that he hadn’t completed the catch and didn’t have a touchdown after all. Apparently he let go briefly as his knee came apart from his leg.

According to the pool report, he didn’t complete the process of the catch, a phrase we’re now all too familiar with.

“He went to the ground, he temporarily lost control of the ball,” referee Carl Cheffers told a pool reporter. “The ball hit the ground, therefore it’s incomplete.”

So to recap: Miller suffered one of the worst injuries you’ll see on a football field, networks and the video boards in the stadium played the replay played repeatedly while he was on the ground in presumably unimaginable pain, and then had his touchdown taken away.

Ouch, ouch and ouch.

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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdown.corner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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