The NFL Replay Rule Turns 20 and the Men Who Wrote it are 'Scared' of What it's Become

This NFL season marks the 20th anniversary of the great, world-shattering social upheaval that is The Replay Rule as we know it. (There was a shorter lived experiment in the late 80s and early 90s that was scrapped.) And the occasion is special in that, for the first time since the current rule went into effect, a major change has been made in the way it’ll be enforced.

I’ll give credit to Yahoo Sports for tracing the play above as the catalyst for The Replay Rule. When Vinny Testaverde was a good half a yard from breaking the plane as time ran out in a late 1998 game but was called in. The blown call cost Seattle a playoff spot and led to wholesale firings on their coaching staff. And it inspired The Rules Committee to bring replay back with what they called the “50 Guys in a Bar” standard. It’s an interesting read, as Yahoo talked to most of the people who were on the committee that brought replay back. Given that last season, New Orleans was robbed of trip to the Super Bowl on a play that would’ve met the “One Billion Guys in a Bar” standard:

Twenty years later, those same members also say it has served its purpose. Which was, as former NFL vice president of officiating Dean Blandino says, “to correct the obvious error in a critical situation.” And has it made the NFL better?

“I think the answer to that,” former commissioner Paul Tagliabue says, “is certainly yes.”

“Because,” adds competition committee chairman Rich McKay, “you never want the audience to not have faith in the way the game is played, and the integrity of the game. I think replay gives people that faith.”

But with its 20th birthday approaching, it also has those same founding fathers concerned. “Worried.” Even “scared.” …

Blandino feels it’s the NFL’s biggest rule chance since ’99. Because it’s replay’s first true venture into the world of subjectivity.

“And you don’t want to go there,” says former Colts president Bill Polian, who was on the late-90s competition committee that brought replay back to the league. “Crossing that line into a judgement call, to me, is a line that we should not have crossed.”

“And I am scared to the dickens … I’m worried about it, to be honest. Because the history,” Polian says of the past two decades, “is of replay creep.” …

Until 2019, NFL lawmakers had, more or less, confined replay to objectivity. “When we created [the system],” Polian remembers, “we said, ‘We will never review judgement calls.’ ” …

And Charley Casserly, former Redskins GM and competition committee member, current NFL Network analyst: “I think the system has worked. But this is one I would’ve voted against.”

These are strange days indeed when I find myself agreeing with Dean Blandino, Bill Polian and Charley fricking Casserly, off all people. But a future where every pass play is subject to getting slowed down and viewed frame by frame like the CCTV footage at a crime scene is dark and full of terrors. In 1999 they vowed never to review judgment calls. But in the 20 years since, we’ve convinced ourselves everything is a judgment call. From the spot the ball was went it went out of bounds to what constitutes a catch to a 60-yard spot foul because a cornerback put his arm on a receiver.

And I guess I share their concern. To be specific, more of the “worried” and less of the “scared.” Unless and until the NFL uses replay to hack into my webcam to watch me singing and dancing in the kitchen to Kelly Clarkson on my Alexa, “scared” is a strong word. But it’s hard not to hear these guys talk about subjectivity and judgment calls and not imagine the worst. The league has gotten increasingly NBA-ified over the last few years, with game-deciding penalties and a disturbing trend toward reputation calls. And I’m concerned this will only make it worse.

But it’s here. We’ll have to live with it. For now, at least. And what I’m hoping for is that this leads to a world where any and all plays are reviewable; it’s just that they can only be reviewed with a coach’s challenge.  Any play, any time in the game. We don’t add or subtract challenges. You get the ones you get and if you squander them on plays that don’t go your way or don’t affect the outcome of the game, that’s on you. Under that system, the Saints would’ve gotten justice and all would be right in America. But instead they overreached. And by tomorrow night we’ll start to find out if the guys who wrote the original rule are right to be worried. If they are, it’ll be too late to do anything about it.