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Late in Thursday’s middle game, the officials missed a blatant hit to the helmet of a defenseless receiver, when Cowboys safety Xavier Woods knocked Washington tight end Jordan Reed silly. And it appears that none of the seven officials saw the helmet-to-helmet contact.

“I asked the referees and they said it wasn’t helmet-to-helmet on the field, but clearly when you watch it, it was, so just a play that they must have missed for some reason,” Washington coach Jay Gruden told reporters on Friday.

Miss it they did, which cries out for procedures aimed at preventing them from missing such a blatant violation of an important safety rule. If nothing else, the real-time pipeline from the league office should be used in those situations to tell the referee to throw a flag, now.

Sure, that would be a violation of the protocol for using the real-time pipeline. But who cares? It’s always better to get it right. And if the real-time pipeline is used for those purposes, it’s hard to imagine anyone getting worked up about it.

Especially when getting it right in that situation would have given anyone who legally wagered on Washington plus the points a chance to win some money.