Jim Harbaugh on the late-picked flag: I saw our receiver get pinned

Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh says the referee who threw a flag that would have given his team a crucial first down late Monday night in their loss to the Cardinals made the right call, and that the referees who threw that flag overruled, made the wrong decision.

The play in question was a third-and-4 just before the two-minute warning. Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert threw a deep pass to wide receiver Simi Fehoko, and the ball sailed wide past Fehoko as he was tied with Cardinals cornerback Max Melton. An officer threw a flag at Melton.

But after the referees made up their minds, they ruled that there was no foul for pass interference because the ball was uncatchable. It's questionable whether it would have been uncatchable without Melton's contact, but Harbaugh says it still should have been a defensive holding penalty, which won't be overturned even if the pass is uncatchable.

“I saw our receiver being held and wrapped,” Harbaugh said. “They made the irredeemable signal. We did a double whammy and he was grabbed. I’ll let them explain how they ran this piece.”

Referee Clete Blakeman's official statement after the game was that all the referees talked about it and said the ball's trajectory made it uncatchable. However, that doesn't explain why there wasn't a defensive hold call.

If the Chargers had received the defensive hold order, they would have had a first-and-10 deep in Cardinals territory with less than two minutes left and could have either scored the game-winning touchdown or at least forced the Cardinals to use all of their timeouts before they did shoot a green field goal. Instead, the Chargers had to kick their field goal right then, and the Cardinals had enough time to score a game-winning field goal of their own in the Cardinals' 17-15 win.

This final Cardinals drive was aided by another questionable call, a helmet-to-helmet hit that gave the Cardinals 15 yards and an automatic first down on third-and-10. Harbaugh declined to criticize that call. But he clearly wasn't happy with the officials Monday night.