One of the enduring mysteries of modern sports is why the NFL can’t even get the most basic element of officiating replay-review right.
That element is this: To get replay right, the league office must actually use it.
The league office messed up not just once but twice on Sunday night in the final game of an already woefully officiated regular season. As it was the only game being played then, the league office can’t even claim it was distracted by other occurrences in the same time frame.
In both cases, one at the end of the first half and even more egregiously at game’s end, the league office didn’t just make a bad call upon review, but refused even to stop play in order to conduct a careful review at all. There is no excuse for that failure.
Amid all the controversy about the end of the Seattle-San Francisco game, the play as the first half closed got lost in the shuffle. Down 13-0, the Seahawks were driving in the final minute of the half but faced third and 11. Quarterback Russell Wilson completed a pass to receiver Tyler Lockett, who was tackled as he stretched for the first down. (Here, at the 3:39 mark.) I watched the replay several times from different angles: The referees spotted the ball a solid half-yard behind where Lockett actually held the ball when his knee touched the ground.
On a play like that, the league office should immediately call for a review. Maybe the officials would have re-marked the ball for a first down, or maybe it still would have been an inch or two short, but a review was justified either way. Instead, they let the game play on, and the Seahawks failed to convert on a fourth-down run. The lack of points scored on that possession would come back to haunt them. Indeed, had the Seahawks been awarded a first down on review then, they might have needed only a chip-shot field goal, not a touchdown, to win at game’s end.
The far worse failure came then, in the contest’s final 18 seconds. As observer after observer noted, the on-field officials missed obvious holding and pass interference calls on a Seattle third-down pass into the end zone. The league office, however, again couldn’t be bothered to stop the game and review it.
After the egregious missed call in last year’s NFC championship game that cost the New Orleans Saints a trip to the Super Bowl, the league instituted replay review of potential interference precisely for situations such as this on. With key playoff implications hanging in the balance, this was a call the league was obligated to get right.
Especially with the clock stopped anyway — meaning there was no chance of giving the Seahawks extra clock time they otherwise would have lacked — this was as obvious a situation as could possibly exist for the office to review the play in slow motion. League official Al Riveron later claimed they reviewed the play anyway, without stopping the flow of action, and determined that the receiver “initiated” contact first.
Balderdash. His explanation is completely inconsistent with literally dozens of calls throughout the year in which mild initial contact was allowed, but subsequent flagrant holding was penalized.
Either way, for the office not even to take time for review in slow motion was a dereliction of responsibility. One solution presents itself: coaches should be able, if the clock is stopped anyway, to demand one review per game in a final-two-minute situation. Obviously, the league office is too blinkered to use replay reliably on its own.
