Kevin O'Connell: It looked like he got a piece of the face mask, but they didn't believe that

At the end of Thursday night's game between the Rams and Vikings, there was a clearly missed facemask call on Byron Young's sack for a safety on Sam Darnold that effectively ended the game.

But both head coach Kevin O'Connell and quarterback Sam Darnold didn't make much use of a foul that, if called, would have resulted in Minnesota keeping the ball.

“You know, it looked like he got quite a bit of face mask there. I'm not going to be on the call or no call and all that stuff,” O'Connell said. “It's just – I told our team that officiating and all that stuff is not the way we're going to respond to this, talking about it and taking solace in it. “It's just not going to happen. And I'm going to do the same thing now.

“I really have no comment on whether it was a [penalty]. It looked like he got a piece of the face mask off, but they didn’t believe that, so they didn’t throw the flag.”

Darnold noted that the team hadn't put themselves in the best position before he was sent off for safety reasons.

“The face mask — it is what it is,” Darnold said. “I thought there was a lot we could have done to not put ourselves in the situation we were in, which was the penalty before that. So we just have to keep playing better and not put ourselves in this situation from the start.”

After that play, the Rams executed a high safety punt and ended the clock with a three-knee run from quarterback Matthew Stafford.

Had the foul been called properly on Darnold's fall, the Vikings would have been trailing by eight at their own 20-yard line with 1:36 on the clock.