Rick Scuteri/Reuters

To some, the picture speaks 1,000 words and four of them are: the Packers were robbed. The image of Cardinals cornerback Michael Adams with his index finger hooked on Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers’s face mask was captured far and wide, sparking the question of whether it was a penalty and why it did not negate the fumble Adams caused. The question gets louder because the fumble Adams caused turned into the game-winning touchdown in overtime of the N.F.C. wild card playoff game when linebacker Karlos Dansby ran it into the end zone.

Here is the explanation from the N.F.L., which affirms the no call, courtesy of the spokesman Greg Aiello:

Rule Explanation from the final play of the Green Bay Packers-Arizona Cardinals game A “face-mask” penalty is a judgment call that is not reviewable by replay. Rule 12, Section 2, Article 5 of the NFL Rule Book (page 81) states that “no player shall twist, turn, or pull the face mask of an opponent in any direction.” The Rule Book describes the penalty as follows: “Penalty: For twisting, turning or pulling the mask: loss of 15 yards. A personal foul. The player may be disqualified if the action is judged by the official(s) to be of a flagrant nature.” The Rule Book describes an approved ruling as it relates to face-mask penalties (page 81). “A.R. 12.12 – Third-and-10 on A30. Runner A1 runs to the A33, where he is tackled by B1, who incidentally grasps A1’s face mask on the tackle, but it is not a twist, turn or pull. Ruling: A’s ball, fourth-and-seven, on A33. No foul.”

Aiello went on to explain that the rules changed before the 2008 season, getting rid of the five-yard penalty for an incidental grab of the face mask. Now, the grab has to reach the level of a 15-yard penalty for the officials to make a call.

For the Packers, the play fell in a pile of questionable calls in the game. One play before the fateful face-mask/fumble, Rodgers was on the receiving end of a helmet-to-helmet hit that was not called and on an earlier touchdown pass from Arizona’s Kurt Warner, receiver Larry Fitzgerald knocked down Packers cornerback Charles Woodson on the way to the end zone, but that was not called either.

Packers players were not up in arms about the final call as they reviewed the painful end to their season on Monday.

“You know what, that’s just how it goes,” linebacker Aaron Kampman said, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “You can’t just say it was one play in the football game. There were a lot of plays in that football game and depending on this, that and the other thing, so…”

The Cardinals largely echoed that, although Coach Ken Whisenhunt did say he wished his team had won with a field goal in regulation — Neil Rackers missed a 34-yarder with 14 seconds left — because “it would have been a clearer victory for us.”

Whisenhunt said he was also glad Rodgers’s fumble did not hit the ground (it bounced off Rodgers’s leg before Dansby grabbed it), because that would have launched a debate about the dreaded “tuck rule,” made famous by the Patriots’ Tom Brady and the non-fumble in 2002. Whisenhunt said he believed the play could have been ruled no fumble if the ball had hit the ground.

“I think it could have been,” he said. “Do you rule that as an interception or a fumble? I’m glad it didn’t hit the ground because that erases any doubt about what it is.”

Instead, all the doubt centered instead on the face mask grab and the penalty that wasn’t.