Early Sunday night, the NFL intended to publicly admit error in the failure to call pass interference at a key moment late in the NFC Championship between the Rams and Saints. Late Sunday night, the NFL had decided to wait.
On Monday, the NFL is still waiting.
It’s a delicate balance for the league, one that has seen (per a league source) the NFL deciding simply to leak to the media a willingness to consider making replay review available for pass interference and other calls and non-calls, such as the missed facemask foul that would have given the Rams a fresh set of downs inside the New Orleans five yard line not long before the non-call at the other end of the field.
That’s the internal compromise, for now. The league is waiting to expressly admit error, opting instead to implicitly concede that a mistake was made by virtue of the willingness to consider making pass interference subject to replay review. By also acknowledging that other missed calls (like facemasking) could be included, the league gives credence to the whataboutism that has allowed Rams fans to smudge the asterisk that otherwise applies to an ill-gotten Super Bowl berth.
It should be no surprise that the messaging has seen honesty and candor replaced by subtlety and spin. Because the NFL has staffed the top of the P.R. with former political operatives, P.R. challenges naturally become treated like political operations. And doing and/or saying the right thing necessarily takes a back seat to doing and/or saying the thing that will seem the most right while avoiding a statement that the league was wrong, if possible.
