Technology, while wonderful, keeps our hands, if not our brains, bubbling over with devices and data. When we sit down for Thanksgiving, turkey leg in one hand, remote in the other, eyes darting between the TV and our smartphones for the latest fantasy and wagering results, we find ourselves about to burst, in more ways than one.
Yet the NFL has added one more dish to their TV buffet — officiating — and the product can cause indigestion.
The league has added layers to games that already take too long. Between the red flags tossed by coaches and automatic reviews summoned by the NFL's replay czar, we are now just as likely to hear from Gene Steratore, Terry McAuley or Mike Pereira as we are from Jim Nantz, Joe Buck or Booger McFarland.
Replay was supposed to bridge the gap between what the refs saw and what really happened. On the rare occasion the refs botched a call, they could stroll to the sideline and scowl into that tablet for the HD, slo-mo money shot. But instead of solving a problem, they've sprouted an industry. Today we have refs grading refs, with mixed results. Too often a retired official is hesitant to snitch on a current one, as perhaps part of some of Omertà among refs.
If the standard replay weren't enough, the NFL has added pass interference penalties under the review umbrella. First, it was an overreaction to the Saints getting hosed in last year's NFC title game, which likely cost New Orleans a trip to the Super Bowl, but it doesn't do well as Exhibit A of the new system.
Like most doomed programs, this one had good intentions — to get it right, to let the screen act as arbitrator. Yet this program, like so many before it, has too many inherent faults. Most calls made by NFL refs are subjective. So it's just human nature for an official to double-down on a penalty he (or she) called rather than look like the fool who blew it. No matter your take on penalties or policies, we're still saddled with a slew of curious calls every week, which are not aided in any way by the heaping of new legislation.
On Sunday, we had a trio of gruesome calls. The Raiders were flagged for roughing the passer when a second lineman fell over Sam Darnold and barely touched him. The Cowboys were pinched for a phantom tripping call that stalled a vital drive in the fourth quarter. And in New Orleans, the Saints were penalized for a pass interference call that was not made on the field and was hardly egregious enough to be reversed by the big shots in the Big Apple, but it was.
According to an October article from Deadspin, there were 40 pass interference challenges over the first 79 games, with just seven reversed, or 17.5%. The article quoted a Tweet from ESPN's Kevin Seifert, who groaned that head coaches were 1-20 in their previous 21 tries to reverse a PI call or non-call. And according to The Ringer, such challenges failed 32 out of 33 times between Week 4 and Week 10.
Call it confirmation bias or a waste of time, or both.
This is the key problem with lapping layers onto an already dubious system. We've accepted replay — with some trepidation and indigestion — as a part of the NFL viewing experience since it began in earnest in 1999. But giving all of us more to metabolize, to judge and debate doesn't enrich the game. Just as a kid with too many toys is never satisfied, we don't need more time and data to a sport that's already drenched in numbers and has long pushed past the three-hour window that used to frame a football game.
The answer is to strip the blankets of bureaucracy from the sport. We understand on a basic level that we are watching a great but imperfect product. The players fumble, miss tackles and toss picks. And sometimes the team in the neutral uniform blows a call. Refs are held to a higher standard, but they can't match a perfect standard.
We know that each piece on that board is flawed, and we don't need more proof with more replays. Give us less, which is always more.
Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonKeidel.
