Why Did Doug Marrone Challenge That Chris Conley Incompletion Against the Texans?

With the Jacksonville Jaguars facing a 4th & 10 with about 11:00 left in Sunday's game against the Houston Texans, head coach Doug Marrone made a necessary call. His team was trailing 19-3 and was in the red-zone, so he rolled the dice and kept his kicker off of the field.

Quarterback Gardner Minshew II saw wide receiver Chris Conley come open around the five-yard line in the middle of the field and let the ball rip. It hit Conley in the hands but with freshly acquired cornerback Gareon Conley draped over him, he could not complete the process of the catch and it was ruled incomplete.

Conley on Conley pic.twitter.com/4P0auYVIN4
— Rivers McCown (@riversmccown) November 3, 2019

Marrone would go on to challenge the incompletion and eventually was ruled against as the call on the field stood. It was Marrone's fifth challenge of the season, and the fourth one he has lost. On Tuesday, he explained his thought process behind throwing the challenge flag on Conley's drop.

“A couple things went into that decision," Marrone said. "One is you’re going to look at is without being able to have seen quickly the replay to really look at it. Right away it goes up as a play that you could potentially challenge because of where it is in the game, and like you said, the situation that you’re in."

Marrone continued, "So, as I was talking through the replay, which we weren’t getting quickly on that situation, which happens, that’s not a problem. You have to decide – there’s two things that go into it; if you have one foot down, then you get the next foot down."

As Marrone would then say, the call really came down to whether Conley made a football move. What a football move exactly is has never really been made consistently clear by officials, but Marrone said it was the reason he ultimately lost the challenge.

"If you have two feet down, you have to survive the ground for it to be a catch," Marrone said. "If you have one foot down, your second foot down, football move, and the ground causes it, when [Conley’s] knee was down, then you can retain possession. So, when I looked at the play again on the screen, I was trying to see if that was a football move coming across the middle. I was told it was deemed not a football move, so therefore you have to survive the ground. That’s why we lost the challenge.”