Referee offers bizarre explanation for missing Rams face mask

What would you do here?

The referees were talking about “Thursday Night Football” after Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold was clearly tripped by the facemask in his own end zone, nearly ending the game as Minnesota trailed by eight points in the last lap started.

Referee Tra Blake spoke to a pool reporter after the Rams' 30-20 win as fans were stunned that the clear violation didn't result in a penalty.

“The quarterback was facing the opposite direction of me, so I couldn’t really see it,” Blake said. “I wasn’t looking and I obviously didn’t see the face mask come off.”

However, the confusing thing about Blake's comments is that he was standing directly behind Darnold while his head was almost completely turned due to the face mask in a 28-20 game.

The reporter then asked if their crew discussed it together after Darnold appeared to go to the ground and raise his hands as if to tell the referee what happened.

“We definitely discussed it on site because they expressed concerns. We discussed it as a team, but we couldn't see it on the field, so we couldn't make that decision,” Blake said.

Blake then explained that penalties cannot be reviewed upon review.

“It looked like he got quite a bit of a face mask there,” Vikings coach Kevin O'Connell said, carefully trying to avoid a fine for criticizing referees.

“I’m not going to be on the call or no call or all that stuff. I told our senior team to talk about it and seek comfort because that's not how we're going to respond. It's just not going to happen, I really have no comment on it. They didn’t believe that, so they didn’t raise the flag.”

Minnesota was outscored 386-272 by Los Angeles and suffered a disappointing loss, while Matthew Stafford welcomed the returns of receivers Puka Nacua and Cooper Kupp.