Officials Erred on Punt Return Call

[Daseal]

Get rid of coaches challenges, put someone up in the booth with the ability to challenge ANY play. This "whistle was blown" and "Down by contact" bullshit pisses me off.

[DirtyLandry]

Originally Posted by Daseal

Get rid of coaches challenges, put someone up in the booth with the ability to challenge ANY play. This "whistle was blown" and "Down by contact" bullshit pisses me off.

I agree. Screw the TV time restraints. It's not like Baseball where there are 5 million games each season and you can afford to drop a few. There are 16 games in the NFL-(not including post season) all of them extremely vital to the overall outcome. I can think of 3 games already this season that bad officiating has resulted in unfair losses to a team. Unacceptable.

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by Daseal

Get rid of coaches challenges, put someone up in the booth with the ability to challenge ANY play. This "whistle was blown" and "Down by contact" bullshit pisses me off.

I think if we're not careful, we will reach a point where what happens on the field takes a backseat to what the replay official can see on tape. I really don't want to see games decided by whether or not a good camera angle of the play exists.

I agree with you that coaches challenges are not necessary, but you generally want to do everything you can to limit the power of a replay official in the booth. There would be zero accountablity in replay decisions if we did that, and IMO that would be a mess.

I'm generally against instant replay, but if we are going to have it, we should be able to use it to solve those penalty confusion issues. It's when it starts getting to the point where we review critical plays to see if there was holding on them, that instant replay will be doing more harm than good.

And you absolutely can't do the "whistle was blown, but the play doesn't end" argument. If we have a system where the Whistle doesn't stop the play 100% of the time, now we have a player safety issue.