Pass Interference and replay

[flv]

Refs don't want to make judgement calls at the end of games. They also use different standards for making judgement calls in the playoffs. It shouldn't be that way but it is, and it's been that way for a long time. I'd like the officials to get calls right and i'm not against instant review. I just don't think the NFL will willingly agree to changing the replay rules - despite the numerous amendments that have previously been proposed.

 

[seahawks-in-qc]

It has been reviewable in the CFL for many years. Just sayin

Ive heard its a real delay there though.

Do you watch?

I’ve been watching the CFL for many years as I am a Canadian resident.
The difference in the CFL is that the coaches have less challenges so that helps speed the game up. However, the reviews take forever. By that I mean even though it looks like a blatant PI the ref will speak with Toronto (head officiating) for hours.

So I believe it is not a bad idea to review those plays but they need to put people compétents that can take the good decision quick.

 

[AROS]

I like the ideas being discussed here. But I want to add one thing to the Debate. Accountability! What do the ref(s) that could have made the call, have in terms of accountability? I understand missed calls on a bang bang play. That missed PI/helmet to helmet was so obviously bad that the official (s) responsible for that call should no longer be employed as NFL referees.

There is no true accountability for refs. Never has been. Not even a slap on the wrist (fines) for egregious calls. This is why a total paradigm shift needs to take place in the NFL. Make refs Full Time employees and make them accountable for their actions and calls, good and bad! Just like real FT employees, you are accountable for your actions. Why should this be any different, especially when so much is on the line?!?

 

[Mad Dog]

Penalties involve way too much judgement call. You can nitpick darn near any play to see a penalty somewhere, but the refs don't always feel like calling it. That would become an absolute cluster fark with review.

The issue with yesterday's non-PI call wasn't an issue of needing review. It was a bad, horrible non-call by a ref who totally screwed up. Job accountability is what is needed there, not replay. I mean, it was just too obvious of a miss to think "oh if we only had replay". Replay is good for determining possession, distance, crossing the plane of the end zone, stuff like that.

So the answer is fire every ref that makes a bad call? I can see that working well.

Their isn't an indefinite talent pool of decent refs. There can be no accountability if there is no real threat of discipline due to a lack of adequate replacements. Its why so many star athletes behave so boorishly at times. You know that no one will fire them unless they hit a woman or commit a felony.

What needs to happen is that the NFL needs to re-think officiating from the ground up using the best of technology. Its a multi billion dollar industry. You'd think they could use NASA level tech if they wanted to. Spend the damn money. Have multiple video cameras and video officials off site reviewing plays in real time and signalling infractions down to the head officials on the field.

It took no time at all for everyone in the world to know that DPI was a penalty. There has to be a way for video refs to get a signal to the on field guys that they missed an obvious one.

 

[SNDavidson]

1.Simplify the definition of as many rules as possible, do it, take it seriously and do it now, seek outside help
2.Hire/fire full time refs, track their stats from college and "draft" them
3.Give each team one additional challenge, make all or nearly all plays challenge-able
4.One for me, adopt NCAA PI penalties

 

[seedhawk]

Well holy you know what batman. Make everything go to review, you castrate on field officials, games slow down, and become nothing but flag fests. On field guys just say screw it, let NY sort it out. Eventually this will lead to the NFL becoming Madden whatever the hell version. A large part of the football experience is bitching and whining over either missed or not called penalties.

Finding the middle that almost satisfies everyone is impossible.

 

[chris98251]

That or get rid of replay showing at games, grade officials based on the games and have a 3 strike rule for being below a certain grade. Officials I think are hesitant to do things knowing the replays show up on big screens and have to deal with backlash.

 

[Bigpumpkin]

Refs don't want to make judgement calls at the end of games. They also use different standards for making judgement calls in the playoffs. It shouldn't be that way but it is, and it's been that way for a long time. I'd like the officials to get calls right and i'm not against instant review. I just don't think the NFL will willingly agree to changing the replay rules - despite the numerous amendments that have previously been proposed.

The only way to get better calls by the Refs is to have them be held accountable. When a Ref gets six "bad calls" confirmed in a season, then they ought to be suspended the rest of the season. Should this happen two seasons in a row, then they are fired.

 

[jeremiah]

Why does everyone keep calling it a missed call? It wasn't missed. Everyone saw it and it was obvious. They just didn't want to call it. It would have more or less ended the game in the Saints favor. If it was a borderline call I could understand, but this was no where near borderline.

How the hell do you miss a call like that? Where was the ref looking if not at the play?

Maybe it's nothing, and I know I'll be watching the Hawks next year and the year after that......but I'm starting to view the NFL the same way I view the NBA. More entertainment than actual sport....and I've pretty much tuned out the NBA, the same way I have professional wrestling.

The game is not "on the square". It is fixed, and has been for some time.

 

[jeremiah]

Why does everyone keep calling it a missed call? It wasn't missed. Everyone saw it and it was obvious. They just didn't want to call it. It would have more or less ended the game in the Saints favor. If it was a borderline call I could understand, but this was no where near borderline.

How the hell do you miss a call like that? Where was the ref looking if not at the play?

Maybe it's nothing, and I know I'll be watching the Hawks next year and the year after that......but I'm starting to view the NFL the same way I view the NBA. More entertainment than actual sport....and I've pretty much tuned out the NBA, the same way I have professional wrestling.

Lino told the CB he thought the ball was tipped

Then you throw the flag, and get in the huddle with the rest of the referees to see if it was tipped or not. I have watched them many times pick up a flag after further input.

 

[HawkRiderFan]

It has been reviewable in the CFL for many years. Just sayin

Ive heard its a real delay there though.

Do you watch?

I put this in the Saints got jobbed thread. I'm a diehard CFL fan too up here. It caused enough delays for them to change the rules to only 1 challenge per game, period.



Re making pass interference challengable. As a very avid CFL fan (I live here) I hope the NFL does it the right. I would make it only a booth review and only in the last 2 minutes or something like that. Here's the pandora's box you open with that challenge. By the rule, you can't contact the receiver or vice versa when the ball's in the air. So what do you do when the coach throws the flag, by the book it's PI, but it's not really egregious? You get "fishing expeditions" by coaches in this case. It will still lead to judgment calls with players, coaches, and fans throwing up their hands in frustration over the inconsistency

When the refs blow a call like that in the last couple of minutes, it's hard for the team on the short end of it to recover. If it happens earlier, you can argue the team has time to recover.
Bottom line - booth review last 2 minutes if they are going that way. And only to fix the really blatant once. And for the love of God don't make illegal contact on a receiver challengable. That was such a disaster they scrapped it.

Interestingly it was the same situation that caused the challenge to be implemented here. It was a playoff game in 2013. It was blatant PI in the endzone (Cris Carter's kid Duron was the intended receiver). Would have put the ball on the 1 first and goal in the last minute of the game. Remember with the yard the defenders have to give off the ball, first and goal at the 1 has a lot higher success rate in the CFL than NFL. It wasn't called, the team had to kick the FG to tie and lost in OT.

 

[jmahon316]

I distinctly remember a game this season, only as few weeks or so ago, where the referee threw a flag after a snap because he thought he saw a penalty on the last snap. Any reason why they couldn't do that with this game?

I get refs are going to make bad calls or no calls, but for crying out loud be consistent

 

[jammerhawk]

I’m extreme. I want everything to be reviewable. I just want fairness in these damn games. And no, I don’t care if they go 4 hours.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

James, I don’t think that is extreme at all.

In order to deal with the league’s stubborn refusal to have a permanent full time staff of referees the answer is to make every play reviewable but with limits similar to the present challenge system. Perhaps there could be three challenges or one to review rules situations added to the discretionary 2 now. Alternatively, the league video oversight crew could call penalties or pickup flags for egregious referee failures or miscalls. Otherwise why exactlyare they there? I think that last idea should remain despite tone expiry of the number of challenges and should remain in place to have a fail safe for obvious refereeing failure.

With the limitatation of a number of challenges no significant extra time is added. We all watch the ‘booth reviews’ in college ball and they seem to be efficient and to me effective.

Or they could keep the present flawed system which arguably takes away from a fair outcome. The controversy surrounding refereeing fails is a fairness issue but perhaps the league doesn’t see it that way. To me it is causing me to wonder why any of us watch if the contests aren’t called accurately/ fairly.

Those were two good football games both marred by refereeing fails easily corrected by chalehnge from the video oversight crews.

 

[AgentDib]

Put a damn big red light somewhere that New York can turn on that stops play, have officials watch every game and have access to camera angles there. When you get something like this hit the Light.

This is probably how it will be 10 years from now. Video Assistant Referees (VAR) were initially controversial in soccer but now look like they are here to stay and fans are getting used to them. The idea isn't that they stop the play for every minor infraction, but that they have the capability to reverse on those few calls that are clearly missed and very important.

I know people are worried about some sort of slippery slope/Pandora's box here, but it is entirely possible to include language surrounding the review to prevent ticky tack stuff from being a problem. Something like "On going automatic review to determine whether there was an egregious penalty that significantly impacted the outcome of the play."

 

[TwistedHusky]

The league has been trying for years to get a piece of gambling revenues. That would give them financial incentive to change the outcome of games.

And now, after making 'mistakes' that literally changed the outcome of the actual SB participants... Some of you want to give them a pass.

You have 2 choices,

1. either this is intentional as it seems a word coincidence a league favorite in a key media market gets a free pass to the Super Bowl

2. Or this was a massive error by the officials that requires firings. The issue is not that a mistake was made but the lack of oversight in place to fix massive mistakes. So you either fix it or just accept the NFL is putting the wrong team in the winner's circle.

Still the error is so egregious that I would be checking the refs bank accounts and spend over the next 5 years. And if I lived in New Orleans I would be finding out where this guy lived and getting people to harass him until he left the profession. He is clearly incompetent or dirty. Maybe both.

I really don't buy the 'parallax' excuse or the NFL trying to spin it doesn't matter the wrong NFC team made the Superbowl

 

[Uncle Si]

Really? Gambling conspiracy?

You think refs would be able count on profitting from one missed call this late in the game that didnt even decide the outcome (albeit allowing the game to continue where anything still could've happened)

Missed calls are the product of the intense nature of the game, the speed of it, the unnerving pressure and ultimately the fallibility of human beings.

How to resolve it is the question.

Believing in steering or outright dictating results for league or personal reasons just infers there is no need to watch football... thus exposing all of your 8 paragraph treatises on Wilson moot

Unless hes in on it!

 

[HawkGA]

Penalties involve way too much judgement call. You can nitpick darn near any play to see a penalty somewhere, but the refs don't always feel like calling it. That would become an absolute cluster fark with review.

The issue with yesterday's non-PI call wasn't an issue of needing review. It was a bad, horrible non-call by a ref who totally screwed up. Job accountability is what is needed there, not replay. I mean, it was just too obvious of a miss to think "oh if we only had replay". Replay is good for determining possession, distance, crossing the plane of the end zone, stuff like that.

So the answer is fire every ref that makes a bad call? I can see that working well.

Their isn't an indefinite talent pool of decent refs. There can be no accountability if there is no real threat of discipline due to a lack of adequate replacements. Its why so many star athletes behave so boorishly at times. You know that no one will fire them unless they hit a woman or commit a felony.

What needs to happen is that the NFL needs to re-think officiating from the ground up using the best of technology. Its a multi billion dollar industry. You'd think they could use NASA level tech if they wanted to. Spend the damn money. Have multiple video cameras and video officials off site reviewing plays in real time and signalling infractions down to the head officials on the field.

It took no time at all for everyone in the world to know that DPI was a penalty. There has to be a way for video refs to get a signal to the on field guys that they missed an obvious one.

I didn't say fire every ref who makes a bad call, but nice straw man attempt. Job accountability can happen in a variety of ways other than just firing. And not all bad calls are as egregious as the one being discussed here. That call is a whole new level of negligence. Demotion, fines, extra training, are just a few things that spring to mind in terms of job accountability.

 

[Uncle Si]

Penalties involve way too much judgement call. You can nitpick darn near any play to see a penalty somewhere, but the refs don't always feel like calling it. That would become an absolute cluster fark with review.

The issue with yesterday's non-PI call wasn't an issue of needing review. It was a bad, horrible non-call by a ref who totally screwed up. Job accountability is what is needed there, not replay. I mean, it was just too obvious of a miss to think "oh if we only had replay". Replay is good for determining possession, distance, crossing the plane of the end zone, stuff like that.

So the answer is fire every ref that makes a bad call? I can see that working well.

Their isn't an indefinite talent pool of decent refs. There can be no accountability if there is no real threat of discipline due to a lack of adequate replacements. Its why so many star athletes behave so boorishly at times. You know that no one will fire them unless they hit a woman or commit a felony.

What needs to happen is that the NFL needs to re-think officiating from the ground up using the best of technology. Its a multi billion dollar industry. You'd think they could use NASA level tech if they wanted to. Spend the damn money. Have multiple video cameras and video officials off site reviewing plays in real time and signalling infractions down to the head officials on the field.

It took no time at all for everyone in the world to know that DPI was a penalty. There has to be a way for video refs to get a signal to the on field guys that they missed an obvious one.

I didn't say fire every ref who makes a bad call, but nice straw man attempt. Job accountability can happen in a variety of ways other than just firing. And not all bad calls are as egregious as the one being discussed here. That call is a whole new level of negligence. Demotion, fines, extra training, are just a few things that spring to mind in terms of job accountability.

I agree here.

The Premier League (English soccer) demotes and suspends referees for egregious errors. I imagine it sends a strong message to the group, as well as aggrieved fans

 

[Sgt. Largent]

The league has been trying for years to get a piece of gambling revenues. That would give them financial incentive to change the outcome of games.

And now, after making 'mistakes' that literally changed the outcome of the actual SB participants... Some of you want to give them a pass.

You have 2 choices,

1. either this is intentional as it seems a word coincidence a league favorite in a key media market gets a free pass to the Super Bowl

2. Or this was a massive error by the officials that requires firings. The issue is not that a mistake was made but the lack of oversight in place to fix massive mistakes. So you either fix it or just accept the NFL is putting the wrong team in the winner's circle.

Still the error is so egregious that I would be checking the refs bank accounts and spend over the next 5 years. And if I lived in New Orleans I would be finding out where this guy lived and getting people to harass him until he left the profession. He is clearly incompetent or dirty. Maybe both.

I really don't buy the 'parallax' excuse or the NFL trying to spin it doesn't matter the wrong NFC team made the Superbowl

Those are some crazy wild conspiracy theories and harsh choices. Why can't we have a choice that's much more reasonable and lucid.

3. Make penalties part of the challengeable calls and plays for coaches. Not more challenges, not different challenges, but now penalties can be challenged and looked at by "New York" like plays are.

That wouldn't slow down the game, and it wouldn't be anything extra. Same rules apply, you can challenge a penalty, and if you're right, it's reversed and no time out lost, and if it's inconclusive or you're wrong, you lose your challenge and time out.

Seems simple to me.

 

[jammerhawk]

Largent where's the drama in that? Your view of course is right.


Of course it needs to be reassessed in order that game changing refereeing fails can be corrected.

I am in favour of a return to a replay official who can fix the obvious screw-ups.