Whatever You Do, NFL, Don't Add More Reviews

Because of what happened to the New Orleans Saints in the NFC Championship game, the football world is in a hyper-intense “fix it” mode.

And when that kind of thing happens, bad new rules are soon to follow.

This happens regularly in politics and occasionally in sports. It’s rare that I offer my expert advice to the NFL, but I’ll make an exception in this case: Whatever you do, don’t add more replays to your football games, as it sounds like you’re seriously considering doing, per Adam Schefter.

"As a possible solution to avoid the type of missed call that occurred in the NFC Championship Game, the NFL is expected to consider a plan that would allow limited coaches’ challenges for incorrect judgment calls that also could include a penalty or time run off if the coach is wrong, per a league source. It is a proposal designed to get those against allowing coaches’ challenges of officials’ judgment calls more supportive of the potential rule change. By creating a disincentive or penalty to even question a judgment call, it would be used rarely and wouldn’t be abused — at least that’s the hope."

It’s good to see the NFL is preemptively concerned about allowing coaches to formally challenge judgment calls. It’s a bit of a goofy idea in theory, since pretty much everybody acknowledges that holding (defensive or offensive), pass interference or some other penalty could be called on every play. We can easily imagine a desperate coach who gives up a critical first down in the final minute throwing out the challenge flag … then going fishing for a holding call, his whole staff having been prepared for just such a moment.

In that scenario, what we’re talking about is basically a mulligan. They had that in Madden for a while, and everybody hated it.

The other problem is that you’re adding yet another fun-killing, time-dragging, pedantic replay to a football game which already has too many of them.

Replays aren’t just boring. They create a weird alternate universe where things that are happening 100 mph on a giant grass field get slowed down to a fraction of a second and the tenth of an inch, as though the ball hasn’t been subjectively spotted and penalties subjectively called for the other 99 plays in the game.

It creates a dissonance that is best observed in a particular basketball scenario: A rebound is coming down, and a defensive player has blocked off his man and is in position for the rebound. As the ball comes into his hands, the man he’s boxing out gets his hand on the ball, poking it out of bounds. For all of basketball history, that’s considered off the offensive team’s hand, and over to the other team — a defensive rebound. But now, with replay, we can see that sometimes, as that ball is getting poked out of bounds by a guy with no chance of getting the rebound, it grazes the thumb of the man in front of him, and the ball must be awarded to the offensive team.

What is “correct” and what is “just” are not always the same thing, and it’s very strange to put referees in the position of reconciling that at the speed of light with everybody screaming at them.

The referee perspective on this is that they would always like to have the chance to get a wrong call right. Considering the treatment they receive when they don’t, you can understand why .

I can also understand why football fans, Saints fans in particular, would want to make sure nothing like what happened to the Saints never happened again.

It’s just … if we can take a step back for a moment … zoom out to 10,000 feet …

Did you like football less before 1998, when replay was instituted (for the second time)? Were bad calls killing the popularity of the sport? Were the wrong teams often winning championships, making the NFL playoffs seem silly and arbitrary?

I’m not saying we shouldn’t have replay at all, nor am I saying the NFL shouldn’t try to solve the situation involving the Saints. My proposal would be to have a booth from which referees can buzz down a call in real time, without a challenge by a coach or a stoppage any longer than a regular penalty. Just an extra set of eyes, making a judgment call based on the broadcast. Nothing more than a backstop.

Just no extra challenge flags, no extra stoppages. That roads never ends.