McKay: We Knew Pass Interference Rule Would Be Up For Discussion

NFL Competition Committee Chairman Rich McKay has tried to reassure the NFL world over the new pass interference replay rule.

Rich McKay says that the league expected a certain amount of resistance, controversy and debate. 

Replay review of offensive and defensive pass interference calls have frustrated coaches, who say the rules are unclear.

So far this season, there have been a total of 44 reviews of which only 7 have been overturned. If you take out the six reviews that came from New York, there have been 38 coaches challenges. This means that only four coaches challenges have lead to an on-field call being reversed. 

It’s understandable that coaches are getting annoyed. Before Lions VS Packers on this weeks’ Monday Night Football, coaches were unsuccessful on 24 of the previous 25 challenges.

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Rich McKay preached patience with the new pass interference rule. He added that the Competition Committee will assess it at the end of the season.

“I don’t think that we would give a summation on whether rule that’s been in place for six weeks is working or not working,” he said. “Let’s let the season play out, just like in use of helmet last year, it was a new rule, we waited until the end of the year. We went back and examined all of it.

“It’s a brand new rule, one that our coaches are getting accustomed to, one that our players and fans are getting accustomed to and one that the officials are getting accustomed to. So I don’t think for us we did it that way; we gave them the numbers, we showed them plays. But I think we’re gonna reserve or at least I always have thought it’s way better to reserve judgment ’til the season is over. You’ve seen the full season and you’ve got an opportunity to look at all the tape, which is traditionally what we do.”

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“But we did know one thing going in. That this is the first time we’ve lived in a subjective world where we’re gonna have a subjective review by an individual as opposed to objective. And we knew that would lead to disagreement. Didn’t mean we shouldn’t do it, but it did mean that we knew there was gonna be disagreement. One thing about replay that served us well is when it’s in an objective world. Whether the two feet are in, whether the ball crossed the plane, even then we can begin to argue at times, but there is objective standards. When you get into the subjective world, we knew that would mean it would be open for discussion.