I do think I need to make one clarification in what I said:
When I stated that a game a can't end on a defensive penalty if they are behind, was simply stating what Maas said.
Acutally it doesn't matter whether they are ahead or not. If they are ahead, then the other team still gets a play to try and win or tie the game. (assuming they are 8 or less points behind)
maybe I'm missing it but your explanation is wrong. It's not that the game couldn't end on a defensive penalty because if the refs didn't allow the rams to change their minds, the game would NOT have ended, we would have done the free kick untimed. Only after the Rams changed to accepting the penalty does the game can't end on a defensive penalty come into play.
That was the question, are the Rams really allowed to change their minds? for example, years ago some idiot Card coach(we've had too many for me to remember which but I'm thinking it might have been Tobin) on the cointoss the other team won the toss and deferred, and we elected to kick off. Which meant we kicked off the first half, and we kicked off the 2nd half because they of course had deferred and elected to received the 2nd half kickoff. When the Cards realized what they had done they tried to change it but the ref said no sorry, you're stupid, you can't change your mind just because you didn't understand the rule. Why wouldn't the same logic apply here?
Not that I think Rackers was going to make it. And my other question, Rackers said drop kick twice, was he really going to have to drop kick it or could they have teed the ball up at the LOS and kicked it? I've never seen this play done do they really have to drop kick it?