Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Lurie addressed the audience of owners, general managers, and front-office executives on Tuesday at the NFL Annual Meeting in Phoenix.
Lurie intended to help persuade the clubs to work together on coming up with a way to expand the instant replay system. He’s been a staunch supporter of it for years and has always backed other teams’ proposals, including when Patriots head coach Bill Belichick called for all plays to be reviewable.
“For me personally, what it really relates to is the integrity of the game,” Lurie said. “You’re asking people to devote their heart and soul, you’re asking your players, your coaches and your fans to devote – and ourselves, our heart and soul to it. … And if you’re asking people to deliver their emotions to the product that you’re presenting, then you owe it to everybody that you’re presenting it to be as accurate as humanly possible. And that’s – it just has to be that way, and I hope we can continue to do that.”
After hours of negotiations, the clubs approved for instant replay to be expanded in 2019 to include offensive and defensive pass interference penalties as well as non-calls. In the wake of the NFC Championship Game, where a blatant pass interference call was missed in the fourth quarter that helped the Los Angeles Rams prevail over the New Orleans Saints in overtime, Lurie reiterated numerous times throughout his nearly 38-minute press conference the importance of preserving the integrity of the game.
“To have a key game, whether it’s a playoff game or just any game during the regular season come down to a human mistake – the referees are doing the best they can. They’re not going to be perfect. None of us are, how they should be? You need a backup system. The technology is there, and it’s about time,” Lurie said.
“The largest plays in the game that are difference-makers typically are defensive pass interference and offensive pass interference. There’s others, as well. But those two are incredibly important, and we’ve never been able to challenge those. We’ve never been able to have a system where in the final minutes of a game or a half they were automatically potentially changed or studied.”
The Eagles specifically proposed that if a scoring play is going to be negated by a penalty then the NFL would be required to confirm the scoring play before the team decides to accept or decline it. Previously, the team would have to choose what to do regarding the penalty first before it is known whether or not it was a scoring play. Rich McKay, the chairman of the NFL’s Competition Committee, called it a “good catch” by Philadelphia.
Lurie noted that the Dallas Goedert touchdown against Dallas that was taken off the board due to an offensive pass interference call last season would now likely be overturned under the new rule.
The Eagles were also one of the teams that wanted player safety-related fouls to also be subject to coaches’ challenges, but that was not part of the approved resolution.
“As somebody said to me, I know you didn’t get that, but you got to walk before you can run, and we’ll be at it, pushing that for next season,” Lurie said. “But this was a start, and I think a really, really good start.”
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