I think the sky judge is over the top. Pun not intended.
This is the best article with totals through week 12. Asshole Face is quoted here because the 'aints got called for PI on a challenge. HaHa! The later part of the article is a good read.
I didn't like the idea of challenging PI because as the article says it is a subjective call. I think the league needs a better definition of the rule for pass interference. As the announcers say "they let them play" in the playoffs which means more physical contact by both sides. Why not all year long. I also think there are too many offensive PIs that don't get called.
As far as keeping the PI challenge. May as well keep it now but, be a little more liberal in calling the PIs.
The league responded to an egregious non-call in the playoffs by making the penalty, or absence of it, reviewable. But the rarity of successful challenges has been confounding.
www.nytimes.com
Pass Interference or Not? No One in the N.F.L. Seems to Know
The league responded to an egregious non-call in the playoffs by making the penalty, or absence of it, reviewable. But the rarity of successful challenges has been confounding.
No flag was thrown when Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey collided with Texans receiver DeAndre Hopkins in Week 11. “I have no idea what pass interference is anymore. No idea,” Texans Coach Bill O’Brien said afterward.Credit...Todd Olszewski/Getty Images
By
Ben Shpigel
To the chagrin of dumbfounded coaches and confused teams, perplexed broadcast crews and enraged fans, every week across the N.F.L.’s vast empire one player interferes with another before a pass arrives — and goes unpunished for it.
In these moments, when yellow penalty flags remain lodged in officials’ pockets, aggrieved coaches weigh emotion against reason: Do they challenge the non-call, hoping that by sheer luck it will be overruled by the new video review mechanism? Or do they stew on the sideline, red flag pocketed, and resign themselves to the unlikelihood of a reversal?
Instead of preventing egregious mistakes, such as the one that most likely cost New Orleans a berth in the last Super Bowl, expanding video review to include pass interference looks like another blunder.
After 12 weeks of wasted challenges and lost timeouts, of inconsistency and obfuscation, the league’s erratic application of the defined standard for overturning an on-field decision — “clear and obvious visual evidence” — has made the football masses yearn for simpler times,
such as when no one knew what constituted a catch. Over all, through Week 12, 15 of 77 reviews of pass interference were overturned, though nearly half of those reversals — seven of 15 — were initiated by the officials in the replay booth, who are responsible for challenges in the last two minutes of the half.
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“The cumulative effect of the misses, plus the replay spotlight on these misses, has really taken its toll,” Terry McAulay, a longtime N.F.L. official who is now a rules analyst for NBC, said in a telephone interview.The questionable calls have dented confidence in a mechanism ostensibly intended to restore it after a mess of an N.F.C. championship game, in which Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman, without consequence,
walloped Saints receiver Tommylee Lewis before the ball arrived.
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With the endorsement of New Orleans Coach Asshole Face,
the N.F.L. competition committee in March pushed owners to make pass interference subject to replay on a one-season trial basis. The reviews are handled by the officiating department, headed by the senior vice president for officiating, Alberto Riveron, in New York. Coaches receive two challenges per game and a third if both are successful. If they lose a challenge, they also lose a timeout.
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Patriots cornerback Jonathan Jones’s play on Giants receiver Golden Taint did not warrant a flag.Credit...Winslow Townson/Associated Press
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Eagles cornerback Avonte Maddox got away with this play on Packers receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling.Credit...Jeffrey Phelps/Associated Press
For so long, the N.F.L. relied on replay to fix objective situations, such as whether a ball-carrier stepped out of bounds or was down by contact. It either happened, or it didn’t.
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By contrast, pass interference is, by nature, subjective. An infraction that might seem clear and obvious to one officiating crew might be disregarded by another. Adding video review, in effect, created separate criteria for pass interference. The rule book’s definition — any act more than a yard beyond the line of scrimmage that “significantly hinders” a player’s ability to catch the ball — differs from the “clear and obvious” standard.
In the Superdome on Sunday, the very stadium where momentum for the new rule originated, the league enforced it against the Saints at a critical juncture, reversing a late non-call on an incomplete fourth-quarter pass and penalizing them for defensive pass interference.
The call gave the Carolina Panthers a new set of downs from the Saints’ 3-yard line. New Orleans won, 34-31, and afterward Payton — who also unsuccessfully challenged an offensive pass-interference call on tight end Jared Cook — expressed his frustration with the video review center in Manhattan, saying that “quite honestly, it wasn’t New York’s best game.”
“Sitting in on every one of those meetings, I don’t know that it’s exactly what we discussed where we are today with it,” Payton said. “In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not. But we’ve got to be able to adjust to it.”
Denver Broncos Coach Vic Fangio recently detailed a conversation he had with another perturbed head coach, who, he said, thought offensive pass interference should have nullified a touchdown against his team. But, Fangio said, that coach didn’t challenge the absence of a penalty because he believed the officials would see the infraction when they automatically reviewed the touchdown, as required for every scoring play.
“He called the officiating department and asked, ‘Why didn’t you overturn it?’” Fangio told reporters last week at Broncos headquarters. “They said that they’ve been told not to overturn those. It’s going to have to be a five-car pileup, I guess, for them to overturn something.”
Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin has lost all three of his pass-interference challenges this season, including two in Week 9 against Indianapolis. In Pittsburgh last week, Tomlin, who was against expanding video review to include pass interference, said the standard seemed to shift without notice at some point in early September.
profootballtalk.nbcsports.com
