Miami Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said the team will "be in talks with the league" over the way the first half ended in the team's Thursday night game against the Buffalo Bills.

After the Dolphins scored a touchdown with eight seconds left in the first half, the Bills returned the ensuing kickoff to their own 30-yard line. With two seconds left in the first half, the Bills' offense came onto the field and set up to run a kneel-down, a play often viewed as a formality.

However, the snap exchange did not go smoothly between the center and quarterback Josh Allen. After the ball was snapped, Allen was already on a knee under center, but he did not immediately have possession of the ball, as it hit his hands and then fell to the field, making it a live-ball fumble. The ball trickled backwards, where Allen then corralled it, got up and tossed the ball to the back judge to the sound of multiple whistles signaling the play to be dead.

"It was a great exercise in my mental discipline," McDaniel told reporters on Friday. "I saw it. I knew what happened. I also saw the whistle blow and I saw them run in, and so then I ran in to prepare for the second half, knowing that he just fumbled -- or I thought they did, at least ... Live speed, it appeared to me that it was a fumble."

There's no question that the play was a fumble, as the official box score even attributes a fumble to Allen. However, the concern for McDaniel and the Dolphins is how it played out after the fumble. Allen clearly recovered the ball as it rolled past him. In a frame-by-frame look at the play, the ball is visible on the broadcast copy of the game between the legs of running back Ty Johnson, and there is a brief moment that shows Allen's right knee being down, which is the opposite knee that he initially intended to down the ball with.

Allen then quickly got up and nonchalantly tossed the ball to the official as both teams headed into the locker room for the break. When the snap was mishandled, there was a brief moment of chaos at the line of scrimmage, where a few Dolphins players noticed something had gone wrong. Dolphins cornerback Jack Jones made an alert movement toward Allen while the quarterback was running backwards, after already having recovered the fumbled snap.

Given that Allen had the ball and his right knee was down, it appears as though the play reached its proper conclusion. But if Allen's knee had not been down while he had possession of the ball, would it have cost the Dolphins an opportunity at more points?

In the NFL rulebook, Rule 7 Section 2 (o) states, "when an official sounds the whistle erroneously while the ball is still in play, the ball becomes dead immediately." A subsection under that ruling further explains a potential situation.

"If the ball is a loose ball resulting from a fumble, backward pass, or illegal forward pass, the team last in possession may elect to put the ball in play at the spot where possession was lost or to replay the down," the rule states.

Because the whistles were clearly heard at the time that Allen tossed the ball back to the official and headed off the field, even if the play was reviewed and deemed to be a fumble that was not downed, the inadvertent whistle would cause the play to be dead immediately. The Bills were the team in possession last.

The other factor in this situation is the clock. Allen fumbled, then recovered his own fumble and jogged backward with the ball, milking off the final two seconds remaining in the half before the whistle blew the play dead.

"It was to the assumption that it was a clean center-quarterback exchange," McDaniel said. "But we'll see how the league rules it. For me, I really work at not expending emotional energy on past things that I can't fix. I'll get mad on game day if I think whatever I'm getting mad at will have an effect on stuff moving forward. Otherwise, I don't think it's appropriate for everyone to wait around while I have an adult temper tantrum."

Dolphins plan to 'be in talks with the league' over final play of first half vs. Bills