It happened this week. It happened a few times this season, actually. Coaches challenged what they thought was a missed pass interference, and were rewarded with the call not being overturned and a timeout taken away. It’s time to get this out in the open: officials aren’t turning over a missed pass interference. They aren’t doing it and coaches need to adjust.
What coaches need to realize is that officials either absolutely hate this rule or that the action needs to be incredibly blatant to rise to necessary proof to overturn a missed call.
Essentially, the Ram-Saints missed call is the level a missed PI call needs to hit before they decide to overturn the ruling on the field. That seems like where we are at because it’s pretty difficult to find a play downfield where the call is overturned. It’s so rare in fact that Matt Patricia decided to not challenge what looked like pass interference and instead opted for a 58-yard field goal and keeping all three of his timeouts.
We should have all seen this coming. That’s a problem for the league. Either they are going to review pass interference by the letter of the law, or they just aren’t going to overturn anything. Coaches are 1-21 since Week 3 when challenging for pass interference. There have been seven successful challenges in 40 attempts. That’s a 17.5 percent hit rate on that type of challenge. Is it really worth it to give up a timeout for 17 percent chance at getting things right? Probably not.
The question is whether coaches will adjust or just keep on forcing officials to take a look at getting the call correct. Coaches can only judge on what has happened this year and it hasn’t been a great challenge.
