TAMPA, Fla. -- Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Dirk Koetter said he took issue with some of the officiating Monday night in his team's 24-21 loss to the Atlanta Falcons. There just wasn't much he could do about it.

Late in the fourth quarter, when the Bucs were down 24-21, they got the ball back with 1:00 remaining. Quarterback Jameis Winston threw an 11-yard pass to tight end Cameron Brate, who was held down in middle of the field by Falcons linebacker De'Vondre Campbell.

"That’s one of those things that [is] a smart play by the defense," Koetter said. "Our sideline is screaming at [the referee]. With the game on the line, that is a hard call to make. It’s not a finite line [where] he held him too long or he didn’t. Our side is saying he did. I’m sure their side is saying, ‘Great play.’"

According to NFL rules, players cannot "unnecessarily remain on a dead ball or on a runner who has been downed" as it's considered a delay of game and is subject to a 5-yard penalty. In that case, it's obviously up to the officials to determine how long is too long.

Brate was taken to the ground with 20 seconds left, but it took nearly five for him to get up because Campbell held him down for 3-4 seconds. Then Winston couldn't spot the ball because the referee tripped, taking more time off the clock.

Winston wound up spiking the ball to stop the clock. That's when Patrick Murray ran out to attempt a 54-yard field goal with 5 second remaining, and he missed.

“Yeah, of course I have a problem with it, but what are we supposed to do?" Koetter asked. "You can’t say, ‘Hey, excuse me sir, could you stop the clock?’ I mean, the clock is running. We’ve got to play on. That’s human error. Before there was instant replay, human error was just factored in as part of the game. I promise you they’re not factoring in the umpire going to get the ball and bear-crawling the last eight yards to set the ball on the hash."

Officials also have the power to stop the play clock when there is an "unintentional delay" that includes "when there is an undue delay by officials in spotting the ball for the next snap."

Defensive delay of game calls are very rare. According to ESPN Stats & Info, there have only been two such penalties called this season, and only one was on a play like the Campbell-Brate situation, where a defender tugged the runner down after he got up, which led to a flag.

Between both incidents, it took about seven seconds off the clock. The Bucs might have been able to run another play, although the argument would be that the Bucs could have called a play that allowed Brate or another receiver to get out of bounds, as opposed to him running along the seam. In those situations, however, boundary plays can be challenging.

"The average NFL pass play takes six seconds and if you’re within one second of that, it’s dicey because we were right there on the edge of field-goal range," Koetter said. "Now, it looked to me on our tape – you can’t always tell exactly where it was – like it could have possibly been somewhere between [eight to 11] seconds that we could’ve got that ball clocked. If so, we would’ve run another play."

If nothing else, they could have given Murray more time to get set for his kick, something Winston said he wished he'd been able to do.

“I don’t know, that’s really what happened – he got rushed," Winston said. "I mean you get rushed into that situation, we have no timeouts, guys falling down and we’re like, ‘What’s going on?’ Then we need to rush our kicker out there on the field. Our spot is the 35-yard line, we were two yards short of that. Pat has been a very consistent kicker for us this year."

Murray has been one of the most consistent kickers in the league from 50-plus yards. In three seasons in the NFL, Murray is 5-of-6 (83.3 percent) on field goals from 50-plus yards. In fact, that was his first miss from there.