NFL owners vote in favor of making pass interference reviewable


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The owners of NFL teams, today, voted on whether to allow the review of offensive and defensive penalties along with no calls. The rule passed on a 31-1 result, per ESPN. Teams will still only have two challenges per game, so nothing major changes there, and will only be able to review calls in the final two minutes of each half.

NFL Commissioner, Rodger Goodell, spoke about the rule change on Tuesday night.

"Having been part of almost all the discussions, I personally believe it was the fact that every club in the league wanted to get these plays right," said Goodell. "Replay is to get it right, and ultimately I think people compromised on long-held views because they want to get the system right -- they want to get the play right.

"I think you will see replay continue to evolve, but I would tell you that I think one of the foundations of it was the challenge system. The clubs really felt that that was important to continue, so I could see it expanding to other plays in the future, but within the challenge system."

The NFL's competition committee also came out and ruled that there was a missed pass interference call on Brandin Cooks in the Super Bowl. When I first heard about this story, for the life of me I couldn't pin point a play that could possibly fit under this realm. It turns out that the play involves Stephon Gilmore and Cooks drops the ball in the end zone. This play is a perfect example of the headache that this rule could cause, in no way should this play be a pass interference call. Sure you can find interference for one millisecond of the play but for the most part this is a great defensive play.



The rule change stems from months and months of whining from the Saints after a missed call in the NFC Championship game. The missed call was unfortunate but not one person can remember a missed call to that degree in quite some time. So we are gonna make a major rule change over one single missed call? I guess so. Ohh and not to mention the Saints also blew their chance in overtime which they seem to forget.

I have heard all day that this is gonna make games four hours long, which I don't agree with. I don't think that allowing one more rule to be challenged will add that much time onto games. I also don't think that the games will be more "fair" or calls will be more "accurate" due to this change. Pass interference is a gray area rule, there is no black and white. If we really wanna nitpick, we could certainly find pass interference on every single play. Especially on the hail marry. There is pass interference every single time. See SB52 with Chris Hogan. I think that this change is going to cause a lot of headaches for the NFL. There is going to be more confusion about what exactly pass interference is or what can be changed under review into pass interference, possibly more confusion than the catch rule.

Here is the Hogan play.


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