NFL Competition Committee will reconsider challenge rule - ESPN

I would hope so!! I thought the overriding intent was "Get the call right!!"

I guess there are loopholes in the rule. You have to ask "Mother may I?" first and then we get the call right.

Sometimes the cure is as bad as the disease, what with side-effects and unintended consequences and all.

I understand the reason for the exception after reading this, but it was obvious in the Lions Thanksgiving Day game that none of the attempts at circumventing the rule for delay or strategic gain was in play. A common sense application of the intent to get the call right should have been applied. As it was, a blatantly incorrect call was left to stand -- when replay was available that would have corrected -- and said incorrect call was allowed to change the eventual outcome of the game.

The refs had lost control of that game before hand any way. They acted like they couldn't wait to get to their candied yams. They picked a bad time to have a bad outcome, what with a national audience and all.

from ESPN.com
NFL Competition Committee will reconsider challenge rule - ESPN:

Dean Blandino, the NFL's director of instant replay, explained the review rule, which was instituted in 2011, during a recent appearance on NFL Network on the heels of Smith's challenge. Details of Blandino's explanation were reported by NFL.com.

"The rule was put in place really to prevent a team in a challenge situation from creating a delay," Blandino said, according to NFL.com. "They're thinking about challenging the play, they commit a foul, jump offside, false start, now they've given themselves more time to make that decision.

"So we tell our coaches, 'Don't throw the flag.' Our officials should get to the sideline, explain to them that the play is not challengeable, and then the replay official is looking at it and he will stop the game and look at it if he deems that it needs to be stopped."

The New York Times cited a specific example of a team purposely incurring a foul in a Giants-Redskins game in 2010. In essence, the Giants recovered a fumble but there was doubt as to whether the Redskins player had been down. While Washington comtemplated a challenge, an official spotted the ball and Redskins linebacker London Fletcher kicked it and was flagged for delay of game. During that course of time, Redskins coach Mike Shanahan challenged the ruling of a fumble.

According to The Times, the competition committee acknowledged the benefit of time a team could gain by committing a penalty in this scenario, so the rule was changed.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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