Reviewing Pass Interference Would Set A Bad Precedent

This Sunday, Super Bowl 53 will take place between the New England Patriots and Los Angeles Rams, however if you are you a New Orleans Saints you might have something to say about it. During the NFC Championship Game the officials missed a very clear pass interference call against the Rams that might have led to the Saints scoring and ultimately winning the game. Their have been ridiculous things like fans wanting to sue the NFL or the Saints owner Gayle Benson questioning the integrity of the league. My response to the Saints is where was your anger and integrity when Bounty-Gate went down and it led you to the Super Bowl. This whole idea of reviewing pass interference doesn’t need to be discussed or even considered. If you make pass interference something that can be reviewed than you are setting a bad precedent for the league and other sports organizations. What New Orleans fans forget, is that there was a missed face mask on Jared Goff that should have been called but it wasn’t. This is another call that could have led to the Ram scoring and winning the game without going into overtime.

If pass interference ends being a call that you can review than what’s going to be next? Are you going to start reviewing holding calls, face mask calls, and roughing the passer calls? There are already too many rules in the NFL that have hurt the game as it is. In recent years, the NFL has had issues with defining what a catch was, a Quarterback faking a face mask in order to win a game and a Quarterback who doesn’t get enough calls because running is a major part of his game. Sports are full of human-beings and there is no human that I know that is perfect. Whether we like it or not, human error is what gets our attention and gets us talking about things. The only way you’re going to get a game called perfectly is if you have robots officiating the game, but they have to be trained to recognize every single call. Do you see how ridiculous that sounds? It’s about as ridiculous as expecting every official to be perfect.

Let’s think about other sports for a minute. If you think about all the miss calls that have ever happened there are thousands upon thousands that have happened. In my lifetime the one call I will never forget as long as I live is the call that happened on June 2nd, 2010. Armando Gallaraga was pitching against the Cleveland Indians. In the 9th inning there was two outs and he had a perfect game going for him. When the next batter came up, he hit the ball in the infield and Gallaraga covered first base. Gallaraga had touched the bag before the runner got there and umpire Jim Joyce called the runner safe.  If anyone’s fans ever should have been upset at a botched call it should have been Detroit Tigers fans. The Tigers aren’t the only Detroit team to be on the receiving end of some obvious bad calls. The Lions have been on the receiving end of some really horrendous calls and some of them involved Calvin Johnson. In all the times those bad calls happened you didn’t hear about Lions fans suing the NFL, or the Ford’s questioning the leagues integrity as far as I know.

If you start reviewing human error during the course of a game than you mine as well take the humans out of the game. Do I think officials needs be held accountable? Yes because there have been too many times where the officials have made calls that have effected key moments in a game. I don’t think they fully effect the entire game because you have to play the full game, and there are things a team could do in a game to take it out of the hands of an official making a bad call. If you start reviewing pass interference it will start a chain reaction in the NFL and other sports that will effect sports negatively. What if basketball reviewed traveling? What if baseball reviewed balls and strikes? If any of these things started being reviewed it would slow down the games and would create more chaos then it would results. The best way to correct human error is by learning from it. If you want better officiating than suspend officials, fine officials and start doing weekly reviews. The NFL should start offering more training sessions for these officials so they can learn from mistakes like the no call on the pass interference in the NFC Championship.

Whether or not pass interference becomes something you can review remains to be seen. Either way, you are going to have people arguing both sides of it. I do think their are solutions like the ones I presented and others that haven’t been discussed yet. As stated before, if you start reviewing referee mistakes it will send a chain reaction, a domino effect and send a bad precedent around the NFL and all of sports. The New Orleans Saints need to suck it up, put their big boy pants on and move on. Lots of teams and athletes have been effected by bad calls, non calls, and missed calls. The only call that needs to be made is the one to end any discussion or idea that would make human error by an official something you could review.