Last year, the NFL adjusted rules regarding lowering-the-helmet rule and the roughing-the-passer after an outcry emerged from the early-season application of the provisions. This year, the new procedure for replay review of pass interference hasn’t sparked the kind of widespread negative reaction that would compel an adjustment -- yet.
That apparently isn’t keeping the league from making an adjustment regarding the intended application of the replay-review process.
There’s a belief in league circles that, at some point before Week One of the regular season, NFL senior V.P. of officiating Al Riveron received a mandate that only egregious errors of judgment regarding calls and non-calls of pass interference should be overturned. The mandate quite possibly came from Riveron’s ultimate boss: Commissioner Roger Goodell.
If so, good. It’s what needed to happen. Riveron’s assessment of a non-call of offensive pass interference in the Week 15 game between the Chargers and Chiefs and a non-call of defensive pass interference in Super Bowl LIII suggested that plenty of flags would be thrown remotely by Riveron for instances of interference that were not the kind of 500-drunks-in-a-bar clear and obvious, like the non-call from the NFC Championship game.
Some believe that, even with a higher standard, the process should entail more than one person making the decision. If it’s clear to, say, three people, then it’s sufficiently clear.
The proof that the bar has been raised appears to be hiding in plain sight, based on the decision not to penalize 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman for pass interference on Sunday based on replay review, when Sherman clearly and obviously kept Buccaneers receiver Mike Evans from getting his hands up to make a catch. That doesn’t mean interference didn’t happen; it did. It means that a flag will be picked up, or thrown, under only when the mistake of judgment is truly egregious.
That’s what the coaches wanted. Despite the things Riveron said before Week One arrived, that appears to be what the coaches are getting. And it’s entirely possible that the credit for this goes not to the guy who is the most powerful man in football during the games, but to the guy who is the most powerful man in football, period.
