Same concerns about pass interference replay were voiced in Canada
Now that the NFL has taken a big, bold step and expanded replay reviews to include called or uncalled pass interference, how often can we expect to see challenge flags thrown?
And plays overturned?
And will games be longer? The principal reasons the league’s mostly conservative-minded owners and decision-makers for years had been so hesitant to go down this road were (a) they were philosophically opposed to making subjective calls reviewable, (b) they were philosophically opposed to having a penalty determined after the fact by someone not on the field wearing a blackand-white striped shirt, (c) they feared coaches would use up all challenge opportunities in every game, thereby making games longer, and (d) they feared coaches would often go fishing for an offensive or defensive pass-interference penalty after an opponent’s late, lead-changing touchdown, to try to negate it.
Indeed, the latter probably will happen on occasion.
But before the NFL owners’ landmark 31-1 vote here to expand replay, in this one-year experiment, they reportedly sought and received verbal assurance from the league’s head coaches that they would not abuse this long-sought privilege.
Does all this sound familiar, CFL fans? The same concerns were cited in 2014, before the three-down Canadian league began allowing DPI/OPI challenges. Didn’t happen. Fans, coaches, owners, league executives and even officials have, by and large, liked the rule, even if, in Year 4, the league reduced the number of times a coach can challenge to once per game.
In the NFL, head coaches in 2019 will continue to be allotted two challenges per game, and three if the first two are successful. The NFL permits coaches before the two-minute warning in each half to challenge a wider array of plays, whereas CFL coaches may challenge only pass interference, illegal blocking downfield on a pass play, roughing the passer, roughing or contacting the kicker, and the unique-to-canada “no yards” infraction for not giving a returner five yards of space at the moment he catches a kicked ball.
New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton — one of eight keepers-of-the-rules on the NFL’S influential competition committee — lobbied long, loud and hard for this change, ever since his team’s unfair loss to the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC championship game on Jan. 20. And who can blame him?
To refresh your memory, the controversial play went like this.
With just under two minutes remaining and the Saints facing a 3rd-and-10 from the Rams’ 13-yard line, with the score tied, at least two game officials in proximity did not flag Rams defender Nickell Robey-coleman with pass interference, even though he clearly clobbered New Orleans Saints receiver Tommylee Lewis long before the ball arrived. Robey-coleman freely admitted to the infraction afterward.
If the Rams had been properly penalized for DPI, the Saints would have been awarded a 1st-and-goal at the L.A. six-yard line with 1:45 left. The Saints not only would have had at least three or four cracks at scoring a go-ahead touchdown, but because the Rams had only one timeout left, the Saints could have run off much or most of the remaining time in the game before, at worst, attempting a highly probable, game-winning, chip-shot field goal.
As it was, the Rams won in overtime and the Saints were robbed of a Super Bowl berth, a scenario involving a late, blown DPI/OPI call that numerous head coaches had been fearing for years. Coaches such as Jack Del Rio, formerly with the Oakland Raiders, told me three years ago:
“(A) person who doesn’t want the change would say, ‘You’re talking about a 1-in-200,000 type time that it happens.’ But as coaches, we’re saying, ‘Yeah! That’s the one time it’s gonna cost us a trip to the playoffs! Or a trip to the Super Bowl!’”
Tell Payton about it.
That egregiously blown call, as Payton told reporters here Tuesday morning, is the sole reason the new rule was even considered.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell all but insisted on the rule being considered in a private meeting early Tuesday with owners.
Payton said coaches are cognizant of the game-lengthening concern and had this response:
“We don’t want long delays. Replays by coaches have gone down consistently. Timeouts have gone down. We’re all saving (time). Sometimes we get scared about the bogeyman. ‘Oh, these games are going to be three hours and …’ No they’re not.
“Because if you give me more pivotal calls to challenge, there’s no way I’m not going to get caught without a challenge flag late in the game. I’m going to be much more selective.
“In the last three years, our challenges have dropped, between the two coaching staffs, to less than three a game. Timeouts, same way.”