NFL Ditching Rule Allowing Teams To Challenge Pass Interference Calls After One Season

After the egregious no-call in the 2018 NFC Championship Game between the New Orleans Saints and Los Angeles Rams, the NFL quickly responded by implementing a rule where teams can challenge pass interference calls, whether they were made or not. That rule will not be in play for the 2020 NFL season the NFL league office announced on Thursday.

In an interview with SiriusXM chairman of the competition committee Rich McKay explained the decision saying that it was really put in as a reactionary move following the backlash from that NFC Championship Game. “In my opinion, we were trying to apply something that we’ve always been fearful of. We didn’t know what the total outcome would be, but we were always fearful of putting a totally subjective play into replay.”

The main issue with the rule, according to McKay, was that it was a very subjective rule. What looks like pass interference to some referees might not be viewed the same way to others. “The fact that whether a ball was caught or not caught – we might disagree once in a 100 (times), but about 99 percent of the time we are going to agree because we can see it on replay. That’s not true in a subjective world, so I think when you did what we did which was try to catch that really egregious big-time play and put that standard of clear and obvious, even then, I think you’re adding a subjective standard to a subjective play and I think we set ourselves up for not having agreement on results, and I think that showed itself during the year.” 

Last season, the rule did not have much of an impact to the outcomes of games, as very few pass interference calls were overturned when a challenge flag was thrown and at one point, coaches were 1-21 when challenging pass interference calls last year.