FOX Sports’ Dean Blandino: NFL Replay Assist Should be Able to Pick Up Flags

The Green Bay Packers have been flagged for roughing the passer eight times this season. That is double the team with the second most, and it is exactly why Rich wanted FOX Sports rules analyst Dean Blandino in the building.

Blandino, the former head of NFL officiating, now works as FOX's rules analyst and as the national coordinator of instant replay for college football. He was at the Lions and Packers game Rich had in mind, and he did not pretend everything was fine. "There were two in that game that were, in my opinion, not roughing the passer," Blandino said.

He also explained who takes the angry Monday morning calls these days. The job has been split up: Walt Anderson, a former official, handles the front-facing communication with coaches and network rules analysts, while former NFL coach Perry Fewell oversees things and deals with the coaches. Blandino remembered his own version of those calls. "The phone calls I would get were not PG-13 phone calls," he said. His approach was simple. "Coach, look, it's not going to do you any good during the game, but we screwed it up. Here's what we're doing to correct it."

Rich's real question was about replay assist. Hasn't the league given New York the power to pick up a bad roughing call? Blandino said yes, but "it's a very narrow scope."

Here is how it works. If the referee announces forcible contact to the head or neck area, that triggers New York to look. If replay sees the hit landed on the chest, the flag comes up. "If there's any contact to the head/neck area, replay cannot rule on the severity of that contact," Blandino said. If the referee calls it a late hit instead, replay is out of it entirely.

Rich asked about a top of the helmet grazing a chin strap. Replay is out there too, which Blandino called ridiculous. The theory, he explained, is that "you want replay to deal with objective facts," not whether a hit was forcible or late. That is why nothing happened on the play where Brenton Cox was shoved while coming off a block.

What really got Rich going was the Devonte Wyatt flag thrown "by a dude on his back," on a play that may have been started by Amon-Ra St. Brown. New York could see it. Replay could not touch it. Blandino said the league moves slowly on purpose. "You got to crawl before you can walk. You got to walk before you can run," he said. He also pointed to personnel: "Do you have enough competent people who can do this and do it consistently, be efficient?" The idea is to hand the replay center a small set of responsibilities and expand from there.

Blandino shared a detail every fan watching at home can use. Replay assist is taught to step in only when a call is obvious from one shot with no real analysis. If it requires comparing angles, that is for the coach to challenge. And there is a hard cutoff. "There's also 20 seconds on the play clock. That's the cutoff," he said. Once the play clock hits 20, replay assist is not coming.

His advice for the viewer: "You could put down your drink and you go, I'm out of this one." Rich admitted he has usually thrown the drink by then.

Rich pitched a fix, inspired by Tom Brady getting fired up about it on a recent broadcast: any 15-yard penalty, the officials must huddle and New York must chime in. Blandino loved it. "I think that's a great place to start," he said, noting that the United Football League already reviews any 15-yard penalty in the spring and picks up the flag if it isn't a foul. "15-yard penalties are big," Blandino said. "They can kill drives. They can extend drives, lead to points."

From the official's side, Rich framed it this way. If he is the first line of defense for player safety, erring on the side of caution, he would rather have replay fix a weak call than be labeled incompetent "when all I'm trying to do is help another human being." Blandino agreed that officials are not anti-replay and that strict enforcement of safety fouls is exactly why a backstop makes sense. He would draw one line: unsportsmanlike conduct, like taunting, is more subjective. "I think the personal fouls, though, 100%. I think that's something you can look at," he said.

Hearing the referee and the replay center talk it out during college games has Rich hooked, and he is impressed by how often the replay center already has the right shot ready. Blandino thinks the NFL is coming around. "I think they're going to do it. I think there's been some internal conversations," he said, though he expects "a very kind of a slow trickle," maybe a prime time look-in rather than every early Sunday game.

"I think that transparency is so good," Blandino said. "You may still disagree, but at least you understand the why."

Game length is the obstacle. The league likes using reviews to take a commercial break, and Blandino said NFL games are up over three minutes through seven weeks, to three hours and six minutes. He still believes the upside far outweighs the downside. In the UFL, the review audio plays in the stadium, and Blandino admitted he gets an earful from the stands in Birmingham. Rich joked that an NFL crowd compared to a UFL crowd is "like the difference between the human race and the Star Wars cantina."

Could it happen this year? "I think we might get something maybe for the playoffs," Blandino said, while insisting he was not predicting anything. Rich's condition: start with a standalone game, not nine at once.

Rich ran some of Cam Heyward's weekly rule ideas past him, including no kneel downs. Blandino recalled a league with a rule where you had to run the ball at the end, and if you didn't gain yardage the clock would stop. On the trend of defensive tackles jumping the spike and knocking over centers, Blandino came out in favor of keeping it. "The spike to me is exciting," he said.

The peanut punch is where he expects change. Blandino called it "the most impactful technique that we've seen in the last however many years," but said that when a defender misses the ball and lands a right cross to the helmet, "striking an opponent is a foul in the rule book." He expects it to be an offseason point of emphasis, not a midseason adjustment.

As for adding an eighth official, Blandino said the league explored it years ago and leaned on technology instead. Rich offered his own logic on that one, then quickly reminded everyone how much he respects officials. "I think the officials have a very difficult job," Rich said. Blandino will be calling Vikings at Lions for FOX this week.