Felipe Alanis
w2w4.com staff writer
January 26, 2019
Since I remember, each and every year, several times during the football season, I recall to complain about referee decisions on the field.
Either it is a holding on a defensive line man that was not called, a rigorous roughing the passer penalty, or a non-existent pass interference call. It always appears to be games that are decided by a good or bad call or non-call. That is what happens with the New Orleans Saints last weekend when they felt robed at the NFC Championship Game against the L.A. Rams in the last few minutes of the 4th quarter. When cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman blasted Tommylee Lewis way before the Drew Brees pass attempt came to him, which not only would mean a pass interference, but also a helmet-to-helmet illegal hit. Long story short, New Orleans could have clinched a Super Bowl trip if not for that non-call.
As a die hard football fan I got to say that sometimes those late game penalties have been ugly for my team and make me want to kill the referee. But honestly, at this moment we need to understand that those mistakes are part of the game as it is today and there is pretty much nothing we can change.
Members of the competition committee will have an important discussion for the next Annual League Reunion in March about reviewing those penalties. And it happens to be that one of the members of the competition committee is in fact N.O. Saints Head Coach, Sean Payton, and he is totally going to try that this problem does not happen again.
But, what are the odds that Payton can achieve his task in changing the actual rule of no penalty is reviewable? The league has never accepted to review penalties, and as a matter of fact, owners, and competition committee members have always being against changing the rules in this matter (Stephen Jones and John Elway already said they are against review penalties, click here to read the note). They argue that reviewing penalties will make the game slower and will affect the flow of it.
First, take a minute and think, is it fair to review penalties? Why are some plays reviewable and not others? How this reviewable plays does not affect the flow of the game but reviewing penalties will?
In my opinion is just a matter of determining when will these calls can be challenged or not. If the coaches have two challenges per game and they want to spend them in penalties, for me will be more than fair. If you are under the 2:00 minute drive, let the officials make the decision. The same way they do it now but including penalties. For me is as simple as that.
This morning I was having a discussion with my mentor about this, and he mention a lot of different alternatives, including using this rule just in the playoffs, when games matter most. Or review the penalty only if it is consider a flagrant penalty, but for me is not that complicated. Using the review only if it is flagrant will be putting the decision again on the referee’s hands, which is what we want to avoid.
Henceforth, like I said, for me is just as simple as make the penalty a reviewable play, same amount of challenges the coaches will have, same management at the two minute drill. Let’s see what the owners and the competition committee can reach, but it is a reality that this call or non-call had maybe change the course of football history for a lot of years, and we want football to be as fair as it could.