NFL leery of altering challenge rules after observing CFL experiment

NEW YORK – The NFL playoffs brought all kinds of clamor for expanded instant replay and other changes to how games are officiated.

Now it seems that momentum has fizzled.

League officials studied the Canadian Football League's challenges of pass interference calls, and the results haven't encouraged too many people at NFL headquarters. Over the course of a full season, the CFL's first year allowing such challenges, there were 55 challenge flags, with most of them being for calls that coaches felt should have been made but weren't.

Only 17 were overturned.

That has given some in the NFL league office pause, suggesting added wrinkles to replay will only delay the game needlessly and perhaps create second-guessing that shouldn't be there.

"Every year it could be something else," said vice president of operations Troy Vincent. "Is that really where we want to go?"

That's not to say instant replay won't be discussed at the league's owners meetings in Arizona next week. Vincent said more time was spent discussing that issue at the competition committee meeting last week in Florida than any other topic. And all proposals will be voted on in Arizona. But Vincent and head of officiating Dean Blandino are beginning to feel that adding layers to instant replay in areas such as pass interference and holding could lead to a rabbit hole of nuance that creates less clarity and more confusion.

"How many more replays would we be creating [if we did what the CFL is doing]? We see replay as an aid, not a replacement." Blandino said. "We don't think reviewing would correct an exorbitant amount of incorrect calls."

"I think if you open this gate," Vincent said, "you could be creating fouls."

The problem isn't just getting it right. It's also being able to teach and communicate the rules in a repeatable way. This is the challenge with the catch/no-catch debate that flared anew when Dez Bryant's apparent season-saving, fourth-down reception in Green Bay last January turned into an incomplete pass and a news cycle of fury. Blandino insisted that the on-field call was correct, and that a change to that rule would create fumbles in other situations. Then officials would have to be re-taught the rule and fans would become even more agitated. As of now, there is no proposal to alter that rule, so don't expect Bryant's plea for a change to be heeded. The goal instead is to be more consistent with the calls made under the current rule.

"Could we be making it too complicated?" Vincent asks. "Too complicated to officiate? Too complicated to teach?"

When reviewing how referees have performed, Blandino and Vincent first look at the real-time replay to get a sense of how a play looked as it happened. They believe that's more fair to the official in the moment, and they feel officials have performed remarkably well in those situations. They estimate that out of 156 plays in a typical NFL game, officials make about three mistakes. Their concern is that trying to iron out or prevent those three errors could cause a lot more.

The Detroit Lions, of course, will point to the occasion when three mistakes were made in one pivotal stretch of a playoff game. A Matthew Stafford pass to tight end Brandon Pettigrew in Dallas was originally called pass interference before being waved off with no explanation. Blandino said the call was debatable, but failing to discuss the play in a conference before making a decision was a mistake. So was a holding call against linebacker Anthony Hitchens that was missed. There was also a missed holding call later in that same fourth quarter on the Cowboys' offensive line as it tried to keep Ndamukong Suh at bay. Had all (or even one) of those situations been reviewable, the Lions could very well have won the game.

The other complaint to come out of that game was about how playoff crews are picked. Rather than keeping regular-season crews together, the NFL chooses the best performers for the season and puts them onto all-star crews for the playoffs. Although that format will also be open for discussion in Arizona, don't expect an immediate change there either.

Momentum for instant replay could build again once the owners gather behind closed doors, but the human element of football appears to be making a stand. Less than three years after the NFL locked out its officials, there's growing evidence that the league is ramping up support for the very people it once felt it could do without.