The missed pass interference call late in the fourth quarter of Sunday's NFC championship game elicited predictably strong reaction, most of which was fair. SN's David Steele, for example, compared the Rams' overtime win to the infamous Tuck Rule Game and suggested the Saints will have to live with one bad (non) call the way the Raiders have for almost two decades. ESPN's Adam Schefter pointed out how multiple penalties could have been called on the play and noted "legacies were changed" based on the result.
Other reactions were not as reasonable. NFL Network's Rich Eisen is one of many who used the missed call in the NFC title game as a reminder that, in the NFL, everything needs to be challengeable, pass interference included. In Eisen's defense, he has been of this opinion for years.
This is where the NFL viewing public takes a turn from passionate and invested to overzealous and irrational.
The league should not make reviewable or challengeable an inherently subjective call; pass interference certainly applies. Doing so would be addressing a perceived issue and not the underlying culprit in all NFL officiating struggles: the relative lack of full-time officials.
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Though not a perfect comparison, the Canadian Football League is a good starting point when dismissing the idea that anything and everything in football should be challengeable. A few years after allowing coaches to challenge pass interference calls and non-calls, the CFL in 2017 cut the amount of coaches' challenges down to one per game. CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie called video review "an artificial impediment" and said "too many challenges and reviews (were) interrupting the game."
It was an unintended consequence to a rule change made with good intentions but bad reasoning.
Now some want to let NFL coaches send pass interference calls and non-calls to the league's centralized replay system in New York? If the NFL struggles with the interpretation of a call that should be objective — like, say, whether a player made a catch — how is it going handle something subjective like pass interference?
The NFL does not need more rules, and it does not need more layers to the interpretation of its current rules, either. The league simply needs better officiating on the field, and its path to such an improvement is strangely obvious.
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In August, the NFL announced the addition of three full-time game officials for the 2018 season. The new number of full-time zebras would be 24, up from 21 in 2017. The league said "the initiative (was) an effort to improve the consistency, efficiency and accuracy of NFL officiating," and clarified, "full-time officials will work throughout the year on game preparation and administration. They will analyze current game trends, communicate with the clubs and help to develop a qualified pool of future officials."
The announcement was made with pride — as if having just 24 of the roster of 121 NFL game officials on board as full-time employees is something about which to boast.
In 2016, before the NFL began its initiative to hire more full-time officials, ESPN noted how the league's employment structure when it comes to officiating was and is a simple refusal to change with the times.
"We can pay these guys," Saints coach Sean Payton said of the filthy-rich NFL at the time. (We know ... the irony.) "They should be full-time NFL officials, and they should be working throughout the week, communicating. And I know they get their hour in here, their hour in there, and maybe even more than that. But by and large, every other sports league employs full-time officials. And ours, these guys all have other significant jobs. And I just think it's very difficult to do with the speed of the game."
The NFL's head of officiating seems to agree.
"Working with the full-time game officials (in 2017) was extremely beneficial," NFL senior vice president of officiating Al Riveron said in August. "Their presence greatly improved communication with the clubs. Our collective goal is to make a positive impact on NFL officiating overall, and this initiative was an important factor for us in that effort."
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So when the NFL presumably ponders adjustments to its replay review and challenge system, it has a choice to make. It could choose to tape up what some consider a broken branch on the tree that is its officiating system as a whole.
Or it could strengthen that tree's roots.
The Saints, the Rams, the 30 other teams and everybody who complains about NFL officiating on a weekly basis surely would prefer the latter.