NFL - NEWS & NOTES

See now we're getting to the really interesting part of the discussion and there's a lot of upcoming devil in the associated detail. Im firmly of the opinion that it cant go on like this, they need to start doing something, probably involving reviewing onfield calls. And i think a lot of others here feel that way too. BUT, where do you draw the line? Are we gonna include all close plays?

My first thought was bww was right, stick to everything between the whistles. But i know the play irishdawg was talking about, the dude was up and out of his stance before the ball even moved, it was a blatant FS. If the resulting TD pass had won the game.....well you know where this is going. Surely a game changing bad call is a game changing bad call whether its pre or post whistle.

How do you decide? And if you don't and just include everything well then im far less certain than others that the game doesn't get massively slowed down. That could become a major problem in of itself.

I don't have to explain to anyone the old cliche of how you could throw a flag on every play. Its a cliche cos its true. Ergo, you could have a review on every play. Again, where does the line get drawn? I reiterate, i am for a change, BUT this is in fact a can of worms. And we may not like all of the consequences that come about from this....

I think all we need now is for someone to complain about a hold/non hold in some game some time some place and this discussion will be ready to go nuclear heh.

 

NFL plans to study making pass interference reviewable...

NFL coaches may be allowed to throw the challenge flag for pass interference penalties next season.

After a crucial non-call went against the Saints on Sunday, Mark Maske of the Washington Post reports that coaches’ challenges may be used on pass interference, and potentially other penalties, starting in the 2019 preseason.

“It will be discussed at length along with additional fouls that coaches feel should be subject to review,” one source said.

That has been discussed before, and has been successfully implemented in the Canadian Football League, but it has never received the support from the required three-fourths of the owners to change any rule.

The bad call against the Saints could convince enough owners to reconsider that the rule could change this year. And it wouldn’t be surprising to see replay review considered for other fouls as well, including facemasking — which should have been called on a crucial Jared Goff run before the Rams settled for a field goal in the fourth quarter. It’s probably only a matter of time before replay review is routinely used to call penalties that the officials on the field missed. (PFT)

 

Along those lines, I have felt for years that the max of 3 (2 if either is unsuccessful) challenges is bogus. If the refs keep messing up, the coaches should be able to keep challenging. I'm also not crazy about the coaches NOT being able to initiate a challenge themselves in the final two minutes of a half.

As for what can be challenged, my take has always been that if the coach thinks it's important enough to risk a time out over it, he should be able to challenge it.

I do agree with the general idea behind the last two minutes rule, in that you don't want to take away a team's ability to stop the clock just because of the potential need to challenge a bad call. In that sense, one solution might be to give each team one or two "challenge time outs" per game that can't be used to stop the clock but only for lost challenges. From there, keep the automatic review of turnovers and scoring plays but ditch the final two minute rule - the coaches must initiate challenges themselves even inside the two minute warning.

 

Here's the thing. If they open up the program to having two officials in the main office reviewing every play for every game, the game won't slow down. At any given time you have, at most, 10 games going on in the early portion of Sunday's schedule. This can be changed to have more afternoon games if they want to cut down on the number of games going on at the same time. You would be able to rehire retired officials, who simply cannot do it physically any more.

The way it is now, the coaches throw a flag, the official goes over and talks to the coach to make sure the language is right on the why and how they are challenging a call. Then the officials come together, they make an announcement of the challenge, then one official goes over to a monitor that is brought out..TALK TO AN OFFICIAL IN A BOOTH... they determine the call together, then make the call and play resumes.

If you have full time booth officials, you would no longer need coaches challenges, you would no longer need the whole prolonged deal of a challenge at all. If a call needs to be reviewed.. the official is notified, stopping play immediately, the call is made IN THE BOOTH, not with the help of an on field official, and the decision is given to the official who then makes the call and resumes play. The whole process would become much faster. With two booth officials, it would also be much easier as those officials would be focused on their game, rather than being called upon from the field of play, have to get the relevant footage to go through, then make the call with the official on the field, who had THEY had it right to begin with would have made the call. So I don't know why an on the field official is needed at all.

 

I was going to start a thread about this very topic but had a "shiney object moment" and got distracted. My thoughts are as follows;

As with any significant problem, there can be (and in this case - there are) many inter-related root causes. Addressing only one of them will not fix the overall problem. IMHO, "Poor officiating" consists of:

• Inconsistency. Either within a game, from one game to another or from week to week.
• Indecision. Did an official actually see a foul or, based on what happened during the play, did he assume a foul had been comitted (or not comitted)?
• Lack of effective real time checks and balances.
• Lack of meaningful consequences for poor performance

 

Interesting read:

https://operations.nfl.com/the-offi...ly-good/officials-responsibilities-positions/

So in essence, on this particular play, there may have only been ONE referee in position to make this call..The "Field Judge". On the other side of the field, you would have basically had two referees, the "Down Judge" and the "Side Judge" dedicated to this play had it occurred on the opposite side of where it happened.

In the case, because it happened on the defensive left side of the field, the equivalent of the "Down Judge" is the "Line Judge", but they have a distinct difference in responsibilities. Each follows the nearest receiver for the first 7 yards, then the Down Judge monitors all receivers and defenders on that side of the field throughout the play...however, the Line Judge, after those 7 yards, reverts back to the offensive backfield to watch for forward/backward pass and that the QB stays behind the LOS before he passes the ball, essentially taking him out of this play completely.

The Back Judge is the other referee involved on both sides of the field, and would have been the Line Judge's backup on this particular play...however, his main responsibility is to the TE position. So, if there are double TEs (and I don't know if there was on this play), he could have his hands full on any given play tracking both TEs and their defenders.

If the play had happened on the other side of the field though, there would have been at minimum, TWO referees dedicated to this particular play instead of ONE on the actual play being discussed.

Making the use of replay even more crucial to officiating an efficient and successful game.

 

Fuck that, false starts need to be included. The chargers scored TDs on two very blatant false start non calls this season. The one against the Steelers cost us the game as we lost by three points. No bad penalty call or non call should decide a game.

 

Have two review officials for every game. Penalties can be called by the review officials if missed on the field. Blatant missed calls and calls should be reviewed. Holding could be called on every play, so that one has to be defined what they are looking for, because it’s obvious that the league doesn’t want holding called that much.

Easy to review

Offside
False start
Pass interference
Personally foul.
Anything involved with the line of scrimmage
Defensive holding

 

Rather than focus on the review aspect (coaches option for review), I believe the focus should be on the immediate.

@IrishDawg42 mentioned the same line of thinking that both Jason and I used to discuss on the original podcast.

Have booth refs at the game. They can impact the game positively by being the confirmation for the on-field judge on all calls. Before the referees confirm calls on the field they would confirm them with the booth refs. All penalties would need immediate confirmation. All touchdowns would continue with the review process. All close spots would be immediately reviewed and confirmed. Nearly every aspect of the game would be positively affected by having a more defined look in the booth and the time would be negated rather quickly once the system was established and refined.

One of the simplest aspects would be microchiping the ball. One in each nose (at the size they are now it would be of no consequence to the integrity of the ball/game-play) and now you have a clear indicator of where the ball is on simple things like where to spot the ball on a punt that goes out of bounds. There would be no question if the ball broke the plane of the endzone just by modifying the rule to make it so that either nose of the ball has to break the plane.

The NFL should be at the forefront of utilizing technology in sports but as in all things league related they simply are too reactionary instead of proactive.

 

15 yrds and a first down.

 

it would throw all of sports in chaos. a commissioner overturning a call ? never been done at this level. so if the refs and technology can't get it right, the commish can still review it ? no way. keep it out of his hands, which are greedy already.

 

The steelers lost the game because they didnt get the job done the refs not calling the flase start did not cost them the game

 

You didn't watch the freaking game if you say that. The OT for the Chargers took 4 freaking steps before the ball was snapped. I don't know any defensive player that would run like the play was still live after witnessing that. Of course the Chargers WR would run his route because he didn't see the OT jump. Every defender knew the play was over because they saw the huge start the OT had. Then they noticed no whistle and the WR streaking down the field. Our team did what was necessary to win, we held the Chargers to 26 points. But the refs gave them an extra 7 which caused us to lose by 3. Replay would have won this game for us.

Bonus fuck up against the Chargers. The punt return with the blatant block in the back. We easily win a laugher if the refs didn't double fuck us.

 

I saw it but the refs had nothing to do with Bens red zone interception that was as bad as any interception Nathan peterman has thrown in his career that took 3 points off the board right there. Then ben missed a wide open hunter taking away a sure touchdown. Yes we got the field goal but that was another 4 points left on the field and not put on the baord thats at least 7 total points we gave away that the refs had nothing to do with.

You say the defense thought the play was over because of the false start. Did they hear a whistle? No they didnt because there wasnt one. Players are taught early and often play untill the whistle. Yeah the refs blew the call but the defense blew their jobs.

It was also not the refs sending linebackers out to cover Allen. The steelers lost that game because they didnt deserve to win not because the refs blew a call. The steelers had multiple chances to put the chargers away and didnt.

Leave blaming the refs to seahawk fans Steelers fans should be better than that.

 

@Tim

What the hell are these robots that hang out with me at 4 in the morning???? Im scared, man!

 

lol

Google, yahoo and Bing crawl the site like crazy during the draft season.

 

It’s reasonable for those players to stop when someone moves that dang blatantly for a false start. The chargers got two free TDs that they didn’t earn and you try and tell me that the refs didn’t cause us to lose. We lost by three points, of course the refs lost the game for us.

 

why are you up at 4 am? you should be sleeping. haha.

 

Michael Thomas wants Goodell to enforce the secret rule and give the Saints the win. Sorry pal. You gotta earn it and refs have cost teams before and screwed them and didn't change anything. Hell the 1972 USA Basketball team won the Gold Medal twice before the refs, who were on the take, waved it off and called bullshit penalties and infractions. The refs took it from them and gave Russia a 3rd chance to score, which they did on a non-push call to win the Gold Medal. To this day, their silver medals were unclaimed in protest.

Regardless of how bad the call was or how missed, you can't give a team a win they didn't earn. The Saints kicked a FG at that spot, not a TD that everyone assumes they would've scored. What if they fumbled ? Can't assume anything. Sorry no free win for the Saints.

 

He’s singing along with Eric Clapton on cocain.