NFL Considering Rule Change to Allow Replay Officials to Call Specific Penalties

NFL replay officials may be able to call penalties for limited plays in the future.

ESPN's Kevin Seifert reported Monday that the league's competition committee is considering allowing replay officials to call penalties on "non-football acts that have gone unpenalized by on-field officials."

NFL executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent said, "You don't want to just be just expanding the Pandora's box, but we believe that things like the non-football act, you can really, really restrict what that is. That's something that we believe that potentially there's a little bit of tweaking in the language, that may be the first step."

Vincent made a point of highlighting how restrictive the process would be if it happened, hinting at a hesitancy to give replay officials more subjective abilities to overrule on-field officials for certain calls.

But he did point out two plays during the past season that may have resulted in penalties if replay officials had this ability.

One came in the Super Bowl when New England Patriots receiver Stefon Diggs and Seattle Seahawks cornerback Josh Jobe grabbed each other's facemasks before Jobe punched Diggs' helmet in a play that was not penalized.

Yet the replay official could have ruled a penalty and even ejected Jobe for the punch if such a system was instituted.

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The other example Vincent mentioned was a Week 16 game between the Seahawks and Los Angeles Rams when Seattle linebacker Derick Hall stepped on the leg of Rams offensive lineman Kevin Dotson in a sequence that led to Hall's eventual one-game suspension.

However, the on-field officials did not penalize him at the moment.

While the NFL has typically been hesitant to allow replay officials the ability to overrule on-field officials for subjective calls and instead focus on more objective things like whether a receiver got two feet in bounds on a catch along the sideline, there is a history of challenging for penalties.

The league allowed coaches to challenge for pass interference calls for one season in 2019 but quickly scrapped it the following year.

Just 13 of 81 pass-interference challenges were deemed successful in 2019, and Vincent said at the time the system "failed miserably."

For now, it seems like the league is focusing on far more restrictive discussions when it comes to replay officials having the ability to call penalties.