Attyla the Hawk
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- Mar 11, 2013
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The NFL made some apparently minor changes to instant replay that could easily lead to a significant back door introduction of radical changes in the system's application:
The spot of foul/downs/clock additions are in fact minor. We see instances all the time where simple mistakes are made that should be avoidable.
But the first item is the elephant in the room. It doesn't merely indicate what is later described as proper penalty yardage assessment. It is loosely (perhaps intentionally) defined as enforcement including down, clock and yardage. Literally verbatim as written it includes penalty enforcement.
Which as of now, allows the result of officials at the head office (Blandino), calling down to on field refs for the purpose of generating penalties that were not called on the field.
For example, the illegal batting of the ball by KJ in the Detroit game. The changes as poorly (or well) written would give the league license to call down to the officials to assess a penalty that wasn't. It does open the door to create issues in the future where matters of subjective opinion are concerned. Illegal contact/holding penalties for example.
It's a very slippery slope. It's worth mentioning that the proposed change to the system that failed: doing away with a two list system, Reviewable plays and non reviewable plays, and replacing it with a single non reviewable play list. This is a major sea change in that anything not expressly omitted would be allowed under review. The way I'm seeing this development is a concerted effort on the part of the league to centralize penalty enforcement by replay and they're doing it in small, palatable bites.
It's very much laying the groundwork for replacing on field officiating with centralized off site officials.
Where does this impact Seattle? Well the history of the Seahawks' brand of play relative to Blandino's consistent after game reviews is incredibly poor. He's been generally very critical of how Seattle plays on the edge of the rules -- which is clearly by design. It's not a good sign for Seattle in particular if penalties can be called down from the head office. Seattle plays smart -- in the gray areas of the rules. It's a competitive advantage for us. Part of that advantage is how players can execute in real time the techniques to allow contact that doesn't cross the line ENOUGH to merit a flag.
Of course it could go the other way and start to result in some holding penalties that we seem to get ridiculously shorted on in almost every game on the defensive line. Ultimately, I think it's going to hurt bad offensive lines and physical secondaries the most if this does come to pass. Which is definitely something that would affect Seattle.
The spot of foul/downs/clock additions are in fact minor. We see instances all the time where simple mistakes are made that should be avoidable.
But the first item is the elephant in the room. It doesn't merely indicate what is later described as proper penalty yardage assessment. It is loosely (perhaps intentionally) defined as enforcement including down, clock and yardage. Literally verbatim as written it includes penalty enforcement.
Which as of now, allows the result of officials at the head office (Blandino), calling down to on field refs for the purpose of generating penalties that were not called on the field.
For example, the illegal batting of the ball by KJ in the Detroit game. The changes as poorly (or well) written would give the league license to call down to the officials to assess a penalty that wasn't. It does open the door to create issues in the future where matters of subjective opinion are concerned. Illegal contact/holding penalties for example.
It's a very slippery slope. It's worth mentioning that the proposed change to the system that failed: doing away with a two list system, Reviewable plays and non reviewable plays, and replacing it with a single non reviewable play list. This is a major sea change in that anything not expressly omitted would be allowed under review. The way I'm seeing this development is a concerted effort on the part of the league to centralize penalty enforcement by replay and they're doing it in small, palatable bites.
It's very much laying the groundwork for replacing on field officiating with centralized off site officials.
Where does this impact Seattle? Well the history of the Seahawks' brand of play relative to Blandino's consistent after game reviews is incredibly poor. He's been generally very critical of how Seattle plays on the edge of the rules -- which is clearly by design. It's not a good sign for Seattle in particular if penalties can be called down from the head office. Seattle plays smart -- in the gray areas of the rules. It's a competitive advantage for us. Part of that advantage is how players can execute in real time the techniques to allow contact that doesn't cross the line ENOUGH to merit a flag.
Of course it could go the other way and start to result in some holding penalties that we seem to get ridiculously shorted on in almost every game on the defensive line. Ultimately, I think it's going to hurt bad offensive lines and physical secondaries the most if this does come to pass. Which is definitely something that would affect Seattle.
