Not quite all in
NFL commish Goodell stops short of endorsing replay expansion, says league’s competition committee will look into it
ATLANTA — Roger Goodell has urged the NFL’s competition committee to consider expanding video replays.
But that isn’t enough. The commissioner has stopped short of personally endorsing such an expansion. And that’s a shame. Because when Roger wants a rule changed, ya know what happens? The rule gets changed.
As we saw last year with the elimination of the dreaded survive-the-ground element of the catch rule. And as we saw a year before that with passage of a rule automatically disqualifying any player upon being flagged twice in a game for unsportsmanlike conduct.
At his annual state-of-theleague news conference during Super Bowl week, Goodell on Wednesday addressed a slew of questions about the fallout from one of the league’s all-time most embarrassing officiating gaffes, with less than two minutes left in the Jan. 20 NFC championship game.
On the controversial thirdand-10 play from the Rams’ 13-yard line, at least two game officials in close proximity did not flag Los Angeles Rams defender Nickell RobeyColeman with pass interference, even though he clobbered New Orleans Saints receiver Tommylee Lewis long before the ball from quarterback Drew Brees arrived.
If the Rams had been properly penalized, the Saints would have been awarded a first-and-goal at the L.A. sixyard line with 1:45 remaining, and not only would have had at least three cracks at scoring a go-ahead touchdown, but could have run off much or most of the remaining time in the game, as the Rams had but one timeout left.
As it was, the Saints had to kick a field goal on fourth down to take a 23-20 lead, but the Rams had enough time to drive for a game-tying field goal at the end of regulation, then won the game and Super Bowl berth in overtime with another long field goal.
Goodell confirmed on Wednesday that the NFL’s senior VP of officiating, Al Riveron, called Saints head coach Sean Payton immediately after the game to admit that pass interference should have been called, but officials messed it up.
Those who loves the Saints in the gulf-coast area — from the far eastern Texas shoreline to the Florida Panhandle — remain livid that their team got robbed of what would have been only its second Super Bowl berth.
“We understand the frustration of the fans,” Goodell said. “Whenever officiating is part of the postgame discussion, it’s never a good outcome for us. We know that, our clubs know that, our officials know that. But we also know our officials are human … They have to make snap decisions under difficult circumstances, and they’re not going to get it right every time. As I say, they’re human. We have worked very hard to bring technology in. We’ve tried to do everything possible to address those issues. But technology is not going to solve all of those issues. The game is not officiated by robots.”
Going forward, Goodell said that the purview of replay reviews is being addressed by ownership’s consultative body on all matters pertaining to game rules and by-laws: The competition committee.
Most of the NFL’s 32 owners rely heavily on recommendations made by that group when voting on proposed changes.
The committee comprises select coaches, GMs, owners and club executives, including Sean Payton.
In the past, Goodell correctly stated, the committee has been adamantly opposed to allowing such so-called “judgment calls” to be reviewed, initiated by either the central replay command centre in New York City or by a coach’s challenge. Similarly, the committee is no less opposed to penalties being called after the fact.
“This was a judgment call,” Goodell said of the RamsSaints play that was recorded in the NFL’s official game book as simply, “D. Brees incomplete short right to T. Lewis.”
“The other complication is that it was a no-call. Our
coaches and clubs have been very resistant … about having a replay official or somebody in New York throw a flag, when there’s no flag. They have not voted for that in the past. It doesn’t mean that they won’t. It’s something that we’re going to have to put to the competition committee to see if there’s an answer to that.”
The NFL merely has to look north to find a model that works — in the Canadian Football League.
As I wrote in a column early last week, since 2014 the CFL has permitted coaches to challenge called or uncalled pass interference, either offensive or defensive. After a few tweaks, it’s a rule that everybody loves — the league, teams, coaches, players and most importantly the fans.
The CFL says that in 2018, including playoffs, 22 of 45 defensive pass interference coach’s challenges were successful upon review — 21 for detecting the foul after the fact, and one for overturning a called penalty.
Including playoffs, there are 86 games in a CFL season. So on average, there was a DPI challenge slightly more than once every game.
Only coaches may initiate a DPI or OPI challenge in the CFL, not the central replay command centre, even after the three-minute warning in each half. But coaches are permitted only one challenge per game, and must have at least one timeout remaining, as the cost of losing a challenge is one timeout.
Also, CFL coaches in all may challenge just six types of “judgment call” plays in the CFL, two of which are DPI and OPI, whether called on the field or not. The other four are illegal blocking downfield on a pass play, roughing the passer, roughing or contacting the kicker, and the unique-toCanadian-football “no yards” infraction for not giving a kick returner five yards of space at the moment he touches the kicked ball.
Allowing replay reviews of pass interference proved so popular in the CFL at the outset, in 2014-15, that the league’s board of governors expanded the purview of judgment-call reviews, per the above additional four types of plays.
Three years ago, the CFL’s then senior VP of football, Glen Johnson, walked me through the reasons for and against allowing such reviews.
“We’ve gone through similar conversations (as the NFL) about, you know, why not just review everything?” Johnson said in a March 2016 interview. “But some of the reasons to not do it are pretty obvious. We don’t want (coaches out of desperation) trying to seek something out on the last play of the game. So what we thought is to limit it to a group of very impactful penalties.
“If there’s a missed roughing-the-passer on the last play, that’s a very targeted thing that you can challenge. So it’s not that you can challenge any personal foul — it’s just a very small targeted group of things that are incredibly impactful.”
Incredibly impactful, indeed.
Back to Goodell. He was asked if his thinking has evolved on such an expansion of replay to include judgment calls, and whether he specifically will recommend the change to the competition committee. Short answer? No.
His full answer: “My role is to make sure that the competition committee understands that this is critical for us to analyze, to evaluate and try to see if there is a better solution than what we have today.
“Our rules do evolve. We have made changes to our rules every year. We try to get better … I think the committee will definitely consider this.”
A few minutes later, Goodell added: “I’ll work with (the committee), I’ll meet with them, I’ll give them my opinion, and push the committee to make sure that we’re thinking about every creative solution possible.”
Contrast those answers to Goodell’s unmistakable endorsement at last year’s Super Bowl news conference, in which he called for a complete reassessment of the long-despised incarnations of the awful “complete the catch to the ground” element of the catch rule.
Goodell said then that although “officials are officiating that correctly, what we have to do is find the rule that we think is going to address what we think should be a catch, and what isn’t.”
Furthermore, Goodell said last Jan. 31 that “I think we’ve got a great opportunity here to get this rule right, so that everyone understands it, appreciates it. We have some very good ideas that we are going to submit to the competition committee.”
He promised that there would “be a lot of focus” addressing that survive-theground element in the short time between the Super Bowl and the late-March annual meeting, where owners always vote on final rule proposals brought before them by the competition committee.
In the end, owners did approve a new catch rule — one without that old, dreaded ground threshold. To everybody’s satisfaction, too, despite decades of naysaying competition-committee members warning that there’d be fumble-paloozas as a result of such an amended catch rule. Never happened.
It’s too bad Goodell, similarly on Wednesday, did not call for the committee to find the best way to widen replay reviews to judgment calls.
There’s still time for him to do so to get it done for this year.
Whenever officiating is part of the postgame discussion, it’s never a good outcome for us.
Roger Goodell