Many coaches would like to see a “Sky Judge” on every officiating crew, with that official being given wide-ranging authority to call penalties from the booth upstairs and then informing the crew on the field of the call. Too many people in the Officiating Department and on the Competition Committee worry that a Sky Judge with independent authority to call anything on the field could flag extraneous fouls away from the play. As we all see every week, it’s easy to find an infraction on nearly every play if you look hard enough.
Instead, the Competition Committee has approved and will send to ownership next week a realignment of duties for the Replay Official, whose job now is mostly in-game replay administration and communication to the crew on the field about things like spot of a foul and game clock issues. The 32 teams will get a list of rules proposals in the hopper this month from the Competition Committee, and the one with the most impact will be giving more authority to the Replay Official. The upstairs official has a direct line of communication with the referee on the field, and it’s expected he’ll be empowered to buzz down to the ref and tell the crew chief of an obviously wrong or missed call. If the new rule is passed, the Replay Official also could tell the ref, for example, that a reception ruled a catch in real time was obviously trapped or missed.
Another obvious aid would be in this case: Team A is out of challenges. With four minutes left in the game, a completion ruled good on the field is clearly wrong because the receiver had one foot clearly out of bounds. The Replay Official could buzz down to the referee and tell him the pass is incomplete. Without this failsafe, a wrong call would stand because a team wouldn’t have the ability to challenge.
I think it’s likely this passes, once all questions about the administration of the chance of Replay Official duties are ironed out.
Two other rules issues, and what I know:
• The onside kick. You may have heard of the proposal to replace the onside kick with the team scheduled to kick off being given a fourth-and-15 play at its 25-yard line. If the team converts the fourth down, it can continue to drive down the field, with a first-and-10 wherever the fourth-down conversion landed. If it fails to covert the fourth down, the opposing teams gets the ball with a first down wherever the previous play ended. Because the onside kick has become so hard to convert and recover, and because of the increased risk of collisions spawned on onside kick plays, I’d estimate the league is split about 50-50 on whether to adopt this. (There may be a slight majority in favor, with the added benefit of the drama of a late-game fourth-and-15 with so much at stake.) Either way, there should be healthy discussion on this.
• Spot and choose. The Ravens proposed to start overtime with one team picking where the opening drive should start, with the opponent choosing whether to play offense or defense at the chosen spot. This appears to have very little chance of success. It’s too weird for most conservative owners (and coaches) to buy into—although just because it’s weird doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. Strange ideas like this one often take years to get the kind of footing to have a real chance to be adopted.
Peter King's Football Morning In America column includes NFL free agency, new TV deals, Deshaun Watson news, possible replay official rule change, more.
profootballtalk.nbcsports.com
Plus, Kraft was the lead negotiator for the NFL's streaming deal with Amazon.
The negotiations for the combo TV/cable/streaming package that finally got done last week began last June, and Kraft spent more time on this project than on any of his previous NFL labor or TV ventures. “TV, and media, is an ever-changing world,” he said.
The NFL, with Goodell and Rolapp and Kraft leading the talks, saw the future. “Today,” Rolapp said, “you are able to watch an original film that won an Oscar on the same site that you buy your toothpaste.” And in 2023, one of Amazon’s crown jewels will be the Thursday night package of NFL games. Movies, toothpaste, Whole Foods groceries, books, the NFL. That’s the kind of partner the NFL wants, a partner already ingrained in the lives of 150 million Americans who use Amazon daily.
What the NFL is good at is making money
by seeing the future. The league saw how beneficial it would be to be in business with Bezos and Amazon. Of course it had to do with Bezos’ ability to make money out of everything, and about Amazon’s ability to stream movies and sports peerlessly. But Kraft wanted to be in business with Bezos, too, because he knows Bezos is so smart about the future—and when Amazon invests $13 billion in a business, Bezos is going to make sure it doesn’t flop. That’s good for Amazon, and good for the NFL.
Said Kraft: “I have so much respect for Jeff Bezos. I said this to him: Our company [Kraft has a worldwide container and paper business] is in more than 120 countries. I’ve never seen anyone scale a business and keep quality as high as what Jeff Bezos has done with Amazon. They’re going to be a very good partner for the NFL.”
