San Francisco cornerback Rod Woodson and Dallas wide receiver Michael Irvin tumbled into the end zone with less than a minute to play, Troy Aikman's pass flicking off Irvin's fingers and a penalty flag falling to the ground.
Depending on your point of view, it was a bogus call.
One official called pass interference on Woodson, which would have given the Cowboys the ball at the 49er one-yard line with a chance to tie the score, maybe go on and win.
But another official ran over and said Woodson's and Irvin's feet had become entangled inadvertently, and with 68,657 fans in 3Com Park providing encouragement, the official suggested picking the penalty flag up.
The official who dropped the flag conceded. The penalty was waved off, and one play later the Cowboys were officially left for dead with San Francisco safety Tim McDonald intercepting an Aikman pass to secure a 17-10 victory.
Dallas (4-5), dropping below .500 in November for the first time since 1990, fell two games and a tie-breaker behind the NFC East Division-leading New York Giants, while the 49ers (8-1) rolled on in command of the home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.
"One ref said, 'I got tripping and I saw him grabbing him,' " said Irvin in relaying the conversation between officials. "Another ref said, 'I think they just got their feet tangled up--maybe you should pick it up.' And the other guy says, 'OK, if that's what you think.' "
Woodson, one of the game's all-time cornerbacks and assigned to shadow Irvin throughout the game, said there was contact, but in his "unbiased" opinion, "the ref made the right call.
"I would probably have been sent to the nuthouse if they hadn't picked that flag up," Woodson said. "If they had left it on the one guy's judgment, the one who threw the flag, we would have been sitting there at the one-yard line with Dallas first and goal."
Instead the pass was ruled incomplete.
"When I got down there, the back judge [Bill Lovett] said to me, 'I saw a trip. That's why I threw the flag,' " referee Bob McElwee said. "The field judge [Scott Green] said the trip was clearly incidental. The rule book is clear that incidental tripping is not a foul in that instance, so we had no foul. The rule book is clear in providing advice for how to handle that situation."
Maybe just as pivotal, if not as controversial, were coaching calls made only minutes earlier by San Francisco's Steve Mariucci and Dallas' Barry Switzer.
