At the Redskins-Detroit Lions game this past Sunday there were two replay challenges that took place after a fairly lengthy (like maybe ~90 seconds) TV time-out. Because it was so blazing hot and one was right before the half, the crowd was very surly about it and it really stood out.
Is there some rule that the TV Audience needs to see the Referee run to the monitor and stick his head under the hood? Are the referees prohibited from taking actions during these TV Timeouts? This was in the final 2 minutes of the half and not on a thrown redflag.
The second was a replay redflag thrown from the sidelines - again after a TV Timeout. Normally I would just assume the sideline was using the TV timeout to decide if they wanted to challenge … but given the above I wondered if there was a rule that they couldn’t throw the flag and had to wait for the TV audience to return.
I believe that the red flag cannot be thrown officially until the referee has indicated that the play clock can start winding down. During the administrative time that is used for things like properly spotting the ball, etc., the officiating crew has other things to worry about. If that is true (someone should be along to clarify), then yes, the red flag challenge couldn’t occur during the time out for commercial break, because the play clock hasn’t been started.
As for the other, I would imagine that it shouldn’t be necessary for a replay called for upstairs during the last 2 minutes of the half to wait for the commercials to end, but what may happen is that, during the commercials, the upstairs official got a good enough look to decide that the replay review was warranted. But that’s speculation on my part (which I don’t normally do here in GQ, so take with salt grains!).
