I have experience as a football referee and also working in a live video control room with multiple camera feeds. It shouldn’t be that hard to officiate quickly via instant multi-angle review. They’re making themselves look exceptionally stupid.
It looks like replay review can be used to reverse a roughing-the-passer call that was made on the field (but replays show to have not been an infraction), but it’s not clear to me that the facemask penalty can be called on the basis of a replay review, if it was “missed” on the field.
Also, the play occurred after the two-minute warning, so it would have been up to the officials (rather than a coach’s challenge) to even review the play.
I could be 100% wrong again, but aren’t all change of possession and scoring plays automatically reviewed anyway? And guy-in-the-sky can absolutely call for reviews, just not teams.
But the Rams have actually requested facemasks be reviewable on replay for several years. The competition committee has turned it down every time.
In non-shitref news, Ndamukong Suh did an AMA on the NFL subreddit this week. It went about as well as you could imagine. Roughly 100 questions were answered (the vast majority being different versions of “why were you such a shitty person on the field?”), maybe ten were answered - the only one answered close to said dirty play was “I don’t have a problem with the guy I stepped on multiple times. Maybe he has a problem with me because I hit him so hard.” Even most of his other answers are trash.
Q: Who’s the toughest O-lineman you ever faced?
A: I could beat anyone. I was never scared.
They are supposed to be, yes. But I was watching a recent Seahawks game (a few weeks ago) where there was a 2 point conversion attempt that they didn’t review, they just ruled it incomplete, and yet if they reviewed it, it would almost surely have been overturned.
Here’s an article:
And a quote:
Replays showed Metcalf got his right knee down inbounds and he secured the ball, which means the catch should have been good. Replay officials are responsible for reviewing the play and decided not to.
Since 2011, all scoring plays are supposed to be reviewed. But sometimes they just aren’t. Yes, it sucks when officials don’t follow the rules properly.
The AMGC team assists throughout the course of each game. All scoring plays and turnovers are automatically reviewed, as are any clock issues that arise. In addition, the AMGC staff handle coaches’ challenges and situations that fall under the NFL’s Replay Assist rule.
To a large extent, I think they’re shooting themselves in the foot every time they release a mealy-mouthed ludicrous explanation of officiating. It would almost be better to say “yup, we’re human and we screwed up”.
If we want human officials and only limited review of them from the head office during games, we have to accept they make mistakes sometimes. That sucks if you’re on the receiving end of a bad call, but that’s how we want to see the game played.
Same reason I see no purpose to the “rules analysts” on the broadcasts. I might think of maybe once or twice over the last decade when I thought they added anything useful (not insightful in the least but still useful) to the commentary.
Mostly they seem to confirm what the commentators have already said and/or defend the officiating crews whether or not they got it right. I don’t need to hear from some retired ref sticking up for their buddies half a dozen times a game, often with hilariously convoluted explanations.
Yeah, there has to be a balance. If every play is reviewed from multiple angles, you’ll have games with minutes between each play, the clock stopping every time, and the game would take all day long. They’re constantly trying to find that balance and tweaking it, and sometimes they get it wrong.
I wish they’d be more consistent though.
I hear them pretty often say the officials got it wrong, and I’m talking about the former officials giving their opinion. Usually something along the lines of, “I’m not sure why they ruled that way, it seems like a mistake.” This doesn’t seem like an accurate characterization.
I’m still super confused about that, too. There was plenty of evidence at the time and I was sitting there speechless in my recreational anger watching the runoff and woke up with it still gnawing a bit. They make a point to say how scoring plays are reviewed and everyone seems pretty happy that the system is in place and is automatic. This is frustrating.
It’s entirely possible. I don’t watch every game. And if they do, kudos to them, because sometimes the verbal gymnastics on some of those explanations is striking. Maybe that’s reserved for the national broadcasts and less for the regular early afternoon games?
But I still say they don’t add a lot. It doesn’t take a former official to confirm what the cameras have captured. Over the course of an NFL season, there just aren’t a lot of controversial calls that can’t be explained between the cameras and the regular commentators.
I won’t argue with you there. Every once in a rare while they’ll have some insight that’s unusual, but most of the time as you said it’s just confirming what the camera is showing (and what the play-by-play guys are opining on as well). I don’t need some ex-official agreeing with two other guys that the pass interference was blatant and that’s why that flag was thrown. DUH.
The normal playclock is 45 seconds. Even 20 seconds is more than enough to check the previous play. TV coverage routinely shows multiple slow-motion replays before the offense breaks the huddle. Put two or three officials in the broadcast control room, where every available camera feed is visible all the time, it should be a simple thing.
Remember, if an on-field official throws a flag 2 seconds after a play, it’s considered “late.”
Per my earlier cite at NFL itself:
The review process happens quickly to avoid interrupting the flow of the game. In 2023, the average review lasted 2 minutes and 8 seconds.
Twenty seconds would maybe make something really, really egregious stand out. But note that they don’t usually have a team of reviewers dedicated to a single game.
A designated AMGC technician is assigned to monitor each game. And three AMGC decision makers — Perry Fewell, Walt Anderson, and Jon Berger — make final replay decisions. Each supervisor is assigned to up to four games at a time, with assistance from support staff.
With the technicians at their stations, the three AMGC decision makers and other NFL staff members can monitor as many as 12 games displayed at a single time across three 90-inch TVs. Staff can control the audio for the entire room, switching to a specific game when there is a flag or a replay review.
So for a Monday/Thursday/Sunday night game where you only have one game going on, maybe they can watch everything like a hawk, but an earlier Sunday game where multiple games are going on might be a bit harder to do. They’d at least need more staff to do this.
And if in that 20 seconds something seems off, they’d have to halt play to have more time to analyze it. “Was that lineman grabbing a tackle’s jersey there on the left side? Let’s zoom in, slow it down, and replay it. Do we have a different angle?”
There is no way they could do that without slowing down the game. I like pausing things for critical plays, like turnovers and scoring plays, but I don’t like the idea of potentially pausing every single play which is what they’d have to do in order to make sure they never miss anything.
Meh. I think the typical post-game internet handwringing over this one is way overblown. Facemask penalties are missed ALL THE TIME. I wouldn’t be strongly opposed to making facemask penalties reviewable, but today that aren’t so that’s a moot point. I also wouldn’t be opposed to expanding the scope of the automatic reviews on scoring plays to include the addition or subtraction of penalties. But in both these cases you’d need boundaries. We all know there’s a technical penalty on every single play, someone is holding, someone is interfered with, someone is lined up wrong, someone leaves a little early, whatever. Officials are trying to catch the egregious ones, the dangerous ones, and the ones that clearly affect the outcome of the play. So making penalties reviewable in retrospect is a pandoras box.
On this specific non-call, it’s just not that egregious to me. It is definitely a facemask, that’s obvious in replay, but at real speed, I didn’t think it was one. We’ve seen a lot of calls where the defender basically palms the players helmet without ever actually gripping the facemask. That can turn the head and look like a facemask. We’ve seen plays where the defender gets a hold of the runner’s collar or a fistful of jersey on the shoulder pads, and the jerk causes the runner’s head to twist and them to be yanked backwards awkwardly. Darnold’s jersey was yanked way down off his shoulder which added to that impression.
The ref may have reasonably thought the defender grabbed his ear hole or the front of the shoulder pad. Maybe his hand was under his chin grabbing the NFL shield. Darnold’s head didn’t really twist that much, and his helmet wasn’t really dislodged or spun at all, which this kind of opposite direction grab would usually cause. It’s completely reasonable to me that they would miss this. The only thing that really makes it stand out was the reaction of the defender, but in the grand scheme of things I don’t want officials flagging plays based on player reactions.
Let’s face it, the Vikings were almost certainly losing this game whether that flag was thrown or not. They were down 8 with 90 seconds to go and no timeouts, they’d have had 1st and 10 on their 20. They needed a TD and a 2-point conversion just to tie, and they hadn’t exactly been great moving the ball all game. If would have been a fun ending to watch and it’s unfortunate, but the gnashing and wailing from the talking heads today is just silly.
Yes, but only to confirm or overrule that the score actually happened. In this case, it would have been “Yes, the ballcarrier was indeed tackled in the end zone, and the safety is confirmed.” And as you noted, facemask penalties are not reviewable.
On January 14, 2018, the Vikings trailed the Saints 24-23 in a playoff game. They had the ball, 1st and 15, on their own 20 with 25 seconds to play.
They won the game, 29-24, on a 61 yard TD pass on the last play of the game. While a last-gasp drive to tie the game last night was unlikely, it most definitely wasn’t impossible.
I know no one is afraid of playing in Foxboro any more, but when I looked at the Jets favored by 7.5, I was wondering what the heck the punters were seeing. The Jets are a shitshow, aren’t they?
Packers lose Jordan Love again, this time to a groin injury, but behind backup Malik Wills, and a run-first offense in the second half, manage to hold off the Jaguars, 30-27.
Brandon McManus has been the Packers’ kicker for two weeks, and has two game-winning field goals so far (this one against the team for which he played last year).
Well, who had the Browns beating the Ravens with Jameis Winston at QB?
The Ravens had looked unbeatable the last couple of outings. Guess not.
I half-assed rooted for the Browns (they’re more tolerable now that Watson is out, but they did still sign him), and so that was fun to watch.
It’s like Watson was completely the problem or something.
Yes, but they have Davante Adams now. 
Arguably, the Patriots are an even bigger shitshow.
He was at least a big part of it.
Browns got lucky that when Winston did his typical thing late in the game (threw the ball right to a defender) that the guy just dropped it. I mean, he had it but couldn’t complete the catch. They scored the winning TD right after.
Jameis does that a lot which is why he hasn’t been a starter for a while, but it worked out and that game had a thrilling ending that came down to the last few seconds. Football games don’t get much more exciting at the end than that one.