Last night’s season opener didn’t come down to a one-play, winner-take-all, two-point conversion. If the game hadn’t been played last night, that might have happened.

After Ravens tight end Isaiah Likely caught a pass in the back of the end zone, the on-field decision of a touchdown was automatically overturned. The default is simple; the on-field decision stands without “clear and obvious” evidence to overturn it.

As explained less formally: 50 drunk people in a bar must agree that a mistake has been made.

Based on the initial replays of the Likely catch, it was demonstrably not “clear and obvious” that his toe landed out of bounds. It looked like it probably did, but it wasn’t clear and obvious. It wasn’t until the final angle came through — with the “NB See It” branding on the screen — that it was clear and obvious that the toe hit the white line.

That’s one of the realities of playing in a primetime, standalone game. If this had happened in the No. 5 game on CBS in the 1:00 p.m. ET window, that final, definitive look likely wouldn’t have been available. Lesser games have fewer cameras. And therefore less chance of having the kind of “clear and obvious” evidence to overturn an on-field ruling.

The good news (especially for the Chiefs) is that NBC had an angle that allowed the call to be overturned correctly on the field. The reality is that not every game gets that kind of help from the officials, who are trying to see through the flashes and blurs to get these calls right.

Ideally, every match would involve a thick blanket of extended camera angles, allowing all decisions regarding the boundary to be viewed with complete clarity and specificity. Perhaps the competition will eventually get there.

Last night the officials came to the right decision, because the match was so important that more cameras had to be present than at other matches.