“This Needs to be Better!” - Rich Puts NFL’s Inconsistent Use of Replay Assist on Blast

Rich is very pro replay. He is very pro replay assist. Which is exactly why one weekend of NFL officiating had him fired up.

For years, Rich has argued that replay assist should do one specific job. If a helmet-to-helmet or 15-yard roughing penalty is called in the field of play and the replay clearly shows that isn't what happened, replay assist should tell the officials on site to pick the flag up. "That should be used like that," he said.

On Monday night, it seemed to Rich that replay assist wasn't used at all. Fred Warner lit up Chig Okonkwo. The officials flagged it, then picked the flag up. The replay showed a hit so violent, face mask to face mask, that Rich believes Warner would have been ejected for targeting if this were college. "How do they not?" Rich asked.

The crew backed him up on the replay. Warner doesn't bow his neck to see what he's hitting, someone noted. He lowers his head and hits Okonkwo "with the crown of his helmet square in his ear hole." Rich expects a fine is coming.

Rich understands the limits. He doesn't think the NFL will ever add flags through replay assist, because that opens a Pandora's box. Nobody wants a touchdown or a first down or a defensive stop erased by "somebody who's sitting in New York City that we don't see." But the league has gone in the direction of using replay assist to determine whether a flag that was thrown should be picked up. On Monday night, Rich said, either replay assist didn't help or "replay assist fell asleep."

And that wasn't even the worst of it. In Los Angeles, Josh Wallace was flagged 15 yards on a hit that gave the Cardinals the field goal position they needed to run out the clock and win. Replay assist let it stand. Rich could see on replay that it was a collision. It looked violent in real time. "But was it 15 yards? No," he said. "And replay assist said, 'You got it.' I don't get it. This needs to be better."

His point is about trust. When replay assist works, it moves things along. It catches the guy who was out of bounds six yards short, and it saves the official a challenge. When it isn't used properly, Rich said, it undercuts how helpful viewers and fans think it is. "And they should be helpful," he said. "They are so many times."

The conversation turned to transparency. One member of the crew had gotten exposure over the weekend to how the Big Ten handles replay on Fox, with the referees' conversations with the replay booth audible to viewers. It was eye-opening during the Indiana game, and the suggestion was that it would benefit the NFL, especially for fans wondering what officials are looking at and how they reach decisions. The UFL even pipes it into the stadium, so fans hear Dean Blandino or Mike Pereira, and that idea came up too.

Rich pushed back on the stadium part, aiming his answer at Mike, the show's sound guy. With bands playing and 100,000 people talking, nobody is hearing the back-and-forth between Rosemont, Illinois, and a referee. And he doesn't think the NFL will add the broadcast version either, because the league does not want college football-length games. "College football games are stupidly long," Rich said.

He has a story to prove how seriously the league takes it. Rich called a Steelers-Colts game in Indianapolis on NFL Network, a massive replay was coming, and the crew immediately rolled to break. Rich sniped on the air. "Oh, that's right. The NFL wants us to go to break," he said. In the 20-some years he worked for the NFL, he said there was no blowback, not even during the lockout. He heard about that comment.

The league uses replay reviews as a spot for commercial breaks so that the 1:00 window doesn't bleed into 5:00 in the afternoon. Rich said he totally understands the push for transparency, especially with so many people convinced the games are scripted. But there is too much money at stake for the league to slow things down.

So his fix is simpler. "Just ref it better in real time," Rich said, acknowledging it's easy to say. And if replay assist exists, use it. Warner got flagged and the flag was picked up. Wallace got flagged and it stood, leading to a game-ending field goal. "Sean McVay," Rich said, "is going to get apologized to again."