When the various components of the nutty Seattle two-point conversion are considered in light of the current rules, everything makes perfect sense. Making the outcome seem nonsensical (even though it wasn’t) had more to do with the delayed resolution of it.
More than one minute and 40 seconds passed from the moment running back Zach Charbonnet picked up the loose ball until referee Brad Allen announced that the play was under review. The teams had aligned for the ensuing kickoff. More than three minutes and 10 seconds elapsed between the end of the play and the commencement of Allen’s announcement that the Seahawks had been awarded two points.
Although long delays for replay review aren’t unprecedented, the combination of the passage of time and the obscurity of the rules that were accurately woven together to change the outcome of the critical two-point try created a general sense that something with the whole thing was off.
That sense flows from deeper issues in the replay-review process, which have created multiple problems this season. (Most recently, the NFL admitted to the Panthers that the replay-review system had botched the reversal of a fourth-quarter catch by receiver Tetairoa McMillan.)
Here’s the problem. More than a decade ago, the NFL decided to centralize the replay process in order to eliminate the inconsistencies arising from having 17 different referees applying the “clear and obvious” standard while conducting the review from the field at every game. The new system was intended to make one person responsible for each review. That person was former NFL senior V.P. of officiating Dean Blandino.
Then, after the approach was changed to put the league office in charge of replay review, Blandino left. As he explained in 2017 on #PFTPM, the league doesn’t value that position the way it should. (Less charitably, they’re too cheap to pay a proper salary for the requisite expertise.)
And so, as we’ve mentioned recently, there’s a current sense of confusion among the various teams as to who’s making the replay decisions. The official rulebook adds to the ambiguity: “All Replay Reviews will be conducted by the Senior Vice President of Officiating or his or her designee.”
Who is/are the designee(s)? Who else is in the room while these important decisions are being made? And who is the Senior Vice President of Officiating? (Check this link, and good luck finding anyone with that title.)
Then there’s the reality that every network has a rules analyst with a direct pipeline to Walt Anderson. Would it be crazy to think, when more than one hundred seconds pass between the end of a play and the commencement of a review, that the decision to take a closer look was initiated by the network’s rules analyst asking a simple question that sparks a flame that otherwise wouldn’t have flickered? (No, it would not be crazy to think that.)
The entire apparatus is cloaked in secrecy. There’s little or no transparency, as to the teams, the media, or the public. Why not have a live feed of the replay center? It would go a long way toward persuading the conspiracy theorists that nothing untoward is happening. (Unless, of course, something untoward — or at least disorganized — is occurring.)
Some have argued for the assignment of three specific replay experts for each of the various broadcast windows, with a camera and microphone sharing the replay discussions with the world. The better approach, in our view, would be to offer Blandino $10 million per year to come back and do the job as it was designed for him to do.
Is that a lot of money? Yes. Is having a clear, coherent, and cohesive replay apparatus worth it? Absolutely.
Think of it this way: At $10 million per year, it would cost each team $312,500 per year. That would be money very well spent, especially since (as one coach put it) the replay-review process is currently in “borderline crisis mode.”
It’s one thing for the various teams to accept the fact that there will be bad calls and other mistakes made. With widespread sports betting (from which the league profits handsomely), many more people than the owners, executives, coaches, and players on the two teams in a given game currently have skin in the game.
And if the NFL doesn’t fix this problem, the overall cost to the perceived integrity of the sport will exceed a pound of flesh.
