Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Replay review for pass interference currently lacks the votes to survive

Arizona Cardinals v Buffalo Bills

ORCHARD PARK, NY - SEPTEMBER 25: A penalty flag on the field during the game between the Buffalo Bills and the Arizona Cardinals on September 25, 2016 at New Era Field in Orchard Park, New York. Buffalo defeats Arizona 33-18. (Photo by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images) *** Local Caption ***

Getty Images

Replay review for pass interference needs 24 votes to survive. Which likely means it’s not surviving.

According to Judy Battista of the NFL, an annual postseason survey from the NFL Competition Committee resulted in 21 teams being against making the rule permanent and 17 teams being against extending it for a year.

While opinions can change between now and the annual NFL meetings in late March, either approach -- permanent implementation or one-year extension -- will require 24 affirmative votes.

The challenge for the league will be to come up with some other approach, in order to avoid another Rams-Saints postseason debacle. The most practical (and cheapest) approach, frankly, could be for the league office to be ready to intervene via the replay-review pipeline if/when a truly egregious error in a stand-alone game happens.

There would be no official change to the protocol, just a wink-nod understanding that senior V.P. of officiating Al Riveron would be ready, willing, and able to break glass in event of emergency, trusting him to know the need for it when he sees it.

Indeed, if he’s done just that in the Superdome in January 2019, plenty of problems would have been avoided.

And although utilizing the procedure would be against the rules, the beauty of the rules is knowing when to break them.