IMO that's where a supervisory official (or officials) in the booth could hopefully quickly ascertain whether it was indeed a horse collar or not, and overrule the officials on the field if need be. Simply touching or brushing one's hand across that area shouldn't be a penalty, but any degree of grabbing should be a penalty imo as it could affect the play or lead to an injury.
I don’t think one “supervisory” is enough to truly suss out our natural biases. It’s just one other opinion. If you want truly unbiased decisions you need to have multiple opinions. That’s why I was saying (in a fantasy world, I know) that optimally a panel of 10 qualified refs in a conf room. If a call is challenged then show the play to the panel and have them vote. If 7 or more people voted to overturn, then you do so. If 6 out of 10 or less do then it’s not overwhelming evidence and therefore shouldn’t be overturned. Of course they’d need to find a way to accomplish this in 30 seconds to a minute, tops. But in terms of the conversation of removing bias, volume is really the only true way to do so.
10 per game? that would require finding 160 new qualified refs to pull that off. not saying it's not possible but just giving the scope
I know, it’s not simple at all and would take a true commitment from the league on integrity. I don’t think you need 10 dedicated to each game though. I think they could easily do a study on how many times concurrently there have been challenges in the past, as well as how many questionable calls came at the same time in multiple games. I feel like 4 panels of 10 would be plenty.
Zebras by their very nature have horse sense. Jackasses do not and thusly are not paid by the NFL. Always follow the money. . .
if it's 4 panels of 10 then only 4 games get the advantage of better reffing so I don't see that as a solution. it has to be uniform across the board
No you’re munsunderstanding. There’s 4 panels (I’m estimating) available for ALL games. They’re in NY HQ or wherever the replay team works out of. Those 4 sets of 10 are at the ready to review any disputed call of every game. The only time they’d ever be short is if more than 4 different games had a dispute at the exact same time.
they can't review every play in detail if they are each doing multiple games. there has to be dedicated teams to each game. I do get your point about "window" but since games go late and since you can't expect these people to work from 10am to 9PM (PST) there would have to be more then 4 crews. you couldn't have the same crew doing the 10am game and the 1pm game because they bleed over at times. you could use a same crew from the 1PM game for the SNF. and MNF, and TNF but still there would have to be at least 8 crews then
I don’t think they should review every call. I think you’d have to allow a coach’s challenge. If they challenge the call the play goes up to any 10 officials who review the play and make a call, without knowing what the call on the field was preferably. If at least 7 out of 10 officials ruled opposite the call on the field, the ruling is overturned. And again, this has to be completed within 30 seconds to 1 minute tops
that still has issues though. like in the rams/pitt game. coach was out of challenges and 2:12 on the clock and it cost them the game on a bad call of a spot. I think they should have a team reviewing every play and buzzing down anything blatantly missed for review. I don't think coaches should have to use a resource to get a call right that was messed up. the leagues job is to keep the integrity of the game, it should be on them
IMO this is an interesting discussion. I do think every call should be reviewed. In that way, not only could bad calls be reversed, but the officials on the field would know that they were being monitored, and if they were biased for whatever reason, they'd have to think twice about making some egregious call. There might be one official or a whole crew of officials, who blatantly miss calls or who call an excessive amount of ticky tack penalties and that needs to be monitored. Having the supervisory officials watch the whole game should effectively remove any hint of impropriety or incompetence from the officials and should keep the officiating more consistent. Regardless of how much training they had, there will be variances in perspective and in interpretation of the rules, and if you had different supervisory crews monitoring any one game, it could be wildly inconsistent. Further, I'd want them watching the whole game, so that if there was a blatant non-call, they would immediately signal the crew on the field to stop the action on the field and to call the proper penalty. If they're already watching the game, then they're alert to what just happened, don't have to be brought up to speed, and the officials on the field don't have to go over to the monitor and watch. They would be more ready to go as soon as the crew watching on the feed gave their ruling, and that would speed up their response time. They might be able to give an immediate response instead of having to watch it several times as officials on the field do. That would mean that there would need to be a crew of supervisory officials for every game. If it was not practical or even possible to have 160 supervisory officials, instead of crews of 10, they could have crews of 7 or even 5. I think an odd number is better. In that way there would be no ties. If you had 10 or an even number, what would happend if it was a 5-5 split? I'm not sure the 30 seconds to 1 minute tops time limit is realistic. People have to go to the bathroom. If they've been sitting around a lot, due to a lack of calls, they could get bored and zone out, there can be technology glitzes as well, plus if they weren't watching the live action, then it would take a few seconds for them to get the feed, figure out which angle they needed to watch or to watch it from different angles, and make their decision. If they have too many calls or more than one game to monitor, they could get maxxed out. In addition, I think it would be very hard to jump from game to game and not have been part of the flow of the game. OTOH, I supposed it would be possible for one supervisory crew to be biased towards one team or another, and if they're making all the final calls, they could influence the game, whereas if different crews of supervisory officials respond, there's less of a chance of that happening. Since there is a Monday night game, a Thursday night game, and I believe that for a chunk of the season there are at least 2 teams who have a BYE each week, if it's really going to have the effect on the game that I would like to see, I think there would need to be a crew for each game. That would require a lot of officials, but imo it's the best way to ensure that the games are fairly and competently officiated. It would slow games down, but unless fans are sitting in a hard downpour or it's freezing cold, that shouldn't be that big of an issue save for possibly night games where people have to work the next day. Still, I'd rather spend a half-hour longer at a game and have the game be accurately and fairly officiated and not be on the shit end of the stick with bad calls constantly as happens to the Jets. There's no perfect solution to this. There are flaws with any approach, because we humans are flawed and can't create perfection. I don't know if AI could even be created that wouldn't make mistakes. If it's worth doing at all, however, it should be done to restore the integrity of the game so there can be no impropriety or incompetence that affects the outcome of games.
Id expect them to have a specific allotted number of challenges added to their current number. The current challenge system is punishing to the challenger by costing a time out. That’s just stupid. A tennis player has a certain number of challenges. If they lose a challenge then they don’t get docked points. This is also why the process has to be completed within 30 seconds to a minute. I don’t have a perfect solution, I’m just saying if we truly want a fair decision the best way to do so is by numbers. That’s why we have jury’s of 12, not 1. Being honest, the best solution is to start employing better refs on the field in the first place
I understand nobody has a perfect solution. Not trying to pick holes in your ideas either. they are good ideas at the base level. I just think that it's the leagues job to make sure the games are fair and are won/lost by the teams and not the coaches. Instead we have a system where the refs decide outcomes, and the league punishes anyone who publicly says it, but also calls the teams to let them know yeah we fucked up. Interesting enough, and IDK if you saw it but the colts owner yesterday did out the league saying they called and admitted they fucked the colts with the bad calls so it'll be interesting if that makes anything happen or if it's swept under the carpet and he's fined a draft pick lol
Current GPS, motion tracking and image recognition technology - and I mean the stuff available to regular consumers and not multi multi billion dollar organizations - could easily surpass the results of a handful of part timers and a guy in a room in NY analyzing 4 somewhat competently operated network camera angles. The human element is only a requirement now if you want to influence the direction of the game.
I get wanting to keep the "human element", but even baseball is going to having a computer call balls and strikes - they've already been doing it in the minor leagues. Personally, I think that sucks, and up to a point I don't think the "human element" - i.e. ref mistakes - is something that needs to be eradicated...it makes the game "human" for lack of a better way of saying it. But the egregious mistakes which have been increasing it seems need to be addressed. And one thing I think the NFL could borrow from hockey is putting a chip in the football that triggers a reaction when any part of the ball crosses the goal line. As for other mistakes they make, I don't think you can eliminate them all, but allowing teams to challenge calls/no calls would help IMO.
I feel like I'd largely be happy to see the human element disappear from officiating. I don't find much joy in missed calls going my team's way and I feel a fair bit of anger at bad calls going against them. Officiating shouldn't play a prominent role in any game.
How about last night? The NFL normally calls pass interference if you breathe on receivers. Except when Tampa throws a Hail Mary at the end, Buffalo can tackle every receiver
I think that the NFL's adherence to the "tradition" of having traditionally flawed officials flies in the face of the league's transition to a big-money media powerhouse. They have intentionally kept the results of their product easy to control through flawed officiating when their professions of "wanting to get it right" would have embraced technological advances years ago. It is ludicrous at this point the amount of money changing hands based on what amounts to "whoops we got it wrong again, so solly guys!"
