One Rule Adjustment The NFL Should Make For Next Season.

Lance Cpl. Kevin Jones [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Lets start by pointing out the obvious, the rules for the NFL will never be 100% picture perfect. You're always going to have some missed calls/bad plays/questionable calls and you're always going to have fans complaining that the refs screwed their team. But I thought of an idea yesterday that could potentially mitigate some of this and correct inevitable errors. The rule adjustment would simply be the expansion of challengeable plays. I'm not talking about only pass interference calls. I'm talking about any missed flag or flag thrown. Sounds like a pretty simple fix, right? Why the fuck has no one ever suggested this until now? Heres how it would work: Coaches from each team are allowed the same number of challenges and there are simply more challengeable plays.

Now, one caveat here is that these plays are not reviewable via official review, only by challenge. If that was allowed, the pace of play in an NFL game would be brutal and a case could be made that damn near every play could be reviewed. Lets go through a couple examples of instances where this could be utilized starting with the biggest screw up of the NFC championship game yesterday:

The blatant missed pass interference call. Wide receiver Tommylee Lewis got knocked to the ground by defensive back Nickell Robey Coleman. Anyone with a pulse who has watched an hour of football in their life knows this was a missed pass interference call AND potential helmet to helmet contact. NFL referee's explanation for the call? ""He should've have been standing there"-Happy Gilmore" - Bill Vinovich. If Sean Payton is able to challenge that play, the Saints are probably scoring a TD and going to the Super Bowl. This is not brain surgery. The challenge is for the ruling on the field of incomplete pass and no flag. Payton would have the ability to challenge that there was interference and potential helmet to helmet contact.

Example #2

The roughing the passer play on Brady in the AFC Championship game. This was atrocious. He still had the ball in his hand while being hit and there was clearly zero head contact. To make matters worse, Mahomes was hit on his shoulder while throwing earlier in the game and there was no flag. The challenge is simply that there was no roughing of the passer and there was no head contact.

Example #3

Missed holding call. These calls could go both ways. Reversing no holding calls or reviewing a play where there was a blatant missed holding call. You will probably see more of the later but holding penalties on crucial plays can kill drives.

I'm not going to list off every type of flag and every example that can go with them, but as long as the games are still televised with 50 different camera angles, I don't think it would be that hard to achieve. I'm sick of watching teams lose important games because of dumb un-reviewable plays. If Goodell doesn't do something about it, I will. (I have absolutely no power on this matter and will just continue to watch games regardless)

-Mr. Football Guy