Behind the scenes at the NFL's replay center, where the smoke never subsides
NEW YORK – There’s “smoke” in Cincinnati.
That’s replay-speak for a play begging for a review, which is why Perry Fewell and Wayne Mackie popped out of their seats in a heartbeat and dashed to join Walt Anderson for a quick huddle around monitors as the 49ers and Bengals settled their thriller in overtime on Sunday.
The officials on the field at Paul Brown Stadium ruled that 49ers receiver Brandon Aiyuk, who turned upfield after snagging a short pass from Jimmy Garoppolo on a crossing route, stepped out of bounds just before the goal line. Yet replays showed that Aiyuk tip-toed to stay inbounds long enough as he stretched the football to break the plane of the goal line inside the pylon.
Anderson, a former NFL referee who oversees the league’s replay system with Fewell, wasted no time in getting to the heart of the matter.
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“Run that back,” he instructed the tech staffer operating the monitors.
He was decisive, watching multiple angles of the play while conferring with Fewell and Mackie.
“That’s a touchdown,” Anderson declared into the headset that connected him to referee Craig Wrolstad in Cincinnati. Ballgame over. Fewell and Mackie nodded in agreement, then quickly went back to their chairs in the center of the room, their eyes fixed on a large monitor that featured the Bills-Bucs game, also headed to OT.
This entire sequence resulting in Aiyuk’s TD might have taken less than a minute, which was one of the longer reviews confirmed or reversed during the significant part of the afternoon I spent observing the operation of the centralized instant replay center on the fifth floor at NFL headquarters.
No chaos, just calm
Officially dubbed “Art McNally Game Day Central,” it is the most important room in the building on Sundays (and Sunday nights, Monday nights, Thursday nights and late-December Saturdays), with decisions needed quickly on pivotal plays. Although the referees can watch replays using tablets and provide input along with replay officials in booths upstairs at game sites, the NFL went to a centralized replay system in 2017.
You might expect the darkened room to be a hub of chaos on game days, especially when multiple games are played simultaneously. Hardly. The scene was calm, orderly and efficient.
For the seven games on Sunday that kicked off at 1 p.m. ET, for instance, Anderson handled the replays for three of the contests. Fewell, a former longtime NFL coach, ruled on two of the games. Mackie, a longtime game official who transitioned to the league office a few years ago, handled the other two. Throughout the day, though, regardless of who was assigned to what game, they peeled off and routinely consulted each other. There were no apparent egos.
“We all chime in to help each other,” Fewell, a former defensive coordinator and twice an interim coach, told Paste BN Sports.
A tech staffer is assigned to monitor each game. And there are supervisors, communication experts, IT staffers and others floating throughout the room.
“I still feel like a coordinator or head coach,” Fewell said. “We have all this to coordinate and to get right on game day. That’s the challenge. And we don’t see Washington-Dallas. We’re trying to do right by the game.”
The new “replay assistance” rule requiring quicker decisions has helped the NFL get a boost from technology. The league has incorporated a video ingest system that allows for instantaneous reviews from various angles in addition to the video provided by the network. That’s huge.
In the past, the NFL relied on feeds from the networks, and the quality and quantity could fluctuate. The league still depends on networks, which provided many of the confirming video used on Sunday, but there’s also the capability to merge shots from various stationary angles (for instance, on a pylon camera or line-to-gain camera) that provide a more comprehensive view of a situation that could determine, say, where the football was located when a player’s knee hit the turf. And it happens faster, with the replay not being solely dependent on getting the network feed.
“It’s expedited the game,” Fewell said. “We have better flow.”
No 'sky judge,' for now
Another significant change came this season as an answer to the push by coaches for a “sky judge” that would have allowed penalties to be called by an official who wasn’t on the field. The league’s competition committee pushed back on that concept and instead got owners to approve a new rule instituting a “replay assistance” system that allows for corrections of obvious mistakes – including whether a pass was completed or not, spotting of the football and clock timing – that conceivably allows coaches to save their challenges.
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I’m guessing the debate for a “sky judge” will continue as calls that are missed, such as a roughing-the-passer infraction that wasn't flagged when Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford was hit in the head, perhaps inadvertently, Monday night in Arizona, continue to pop up.
Yet it’s clear that at this point, the replay assistance rule is having the desired effect: Total replay reviews and coaches challenges, in addition to reversals, are down significantly through 14 weeks. Excluding the Monday night game, there were 211 total replay reviews (120 reversals) and 101 coaches challenges (43 reversals), down from 297 reviews (163 reversals) and 117 challenges (60 reversals) at the same point last season. The more efficient replay reviews – decisions must be made before the play-clock hits 20 seconds – have shaved off more than a minute of the average game time to 3 hours, 4 minutes, 19 seconds.
“If we can avoid a coach challenging something, that’s what we should be doing,” Troy Vincent, the NFL’s executive vice president of football operations, told Paste BN Sports. “Let him save the challenges (and timeouts, if challenges don’t succeed) for a crucial part of the game.”
Vincent, a former NFL defensive back, is adamant about his philosophical position against having penalties called by an official (a “sky judge") who is not on the field.
“We didn’t say this was going to be easy,” Vincent said. “We want it to be fair in getting it right. You can’t have everything reviewed.”
Of course, the NFL reviews just about everything related to the game – including infractions that lead vice president Jon Runyan to issue about two dozen disciplinary fines each week, and the grading of the individual officials for each play – at some point.
In the heat of the games, though, even with better technology, it’s evident NFL officiating still involves a human element.
The human element and 'Misery Monday'
“Are we fair to our clubs?” Fewell said. “The officials get it right 98% of the time. It’s that 2% that shows we’re human.”
Debates about officials' calls – or non-calls – will never go away completely. Near the end of the Bucs-Bills game, it appeared Tampa Bay cornerback Carlton Davis got away with yanking the collar of Buffalo receiver Stefon Diggs.
No DPI?
Although the play wasn’t reviewable under instant replay rules, Mackie took the question to heart and instructed the tech staffer to call up the play for a closer look.
“I would have supported a flag,” Mackie concluded.
He said he also could understand why a flag wasn’t thrown. It was close. A penalty might have determined the game’s outcome. As it turned out, Buffalo settled for a field goal, then lost in overtime.
The human element. That comes the day after games, too, with phone calls from disgruntled coaches, seeking explanations.
“We call it, ‘Misery Monday,’ " Vincent said. “Usually, we only hear from the coaches who lost.”
In other words, the smoke never subsides.
Follow Paste BN Sports' Jarrett Bell on Twitter @JarrettBell.