Just in case you thought the NFL couldn’t be more byzantine or silly about its rules, what former referee Mike Pereira revealed during the Chicago Bears’ battle with the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday will floor you.
After Vikings receiver Jordan Addison caught a 68-yard pass at the start of the third quarter, Chicago head coach Matt Eberflus challenged the play because it sure seemed like Addison stepped out of bounds before getting a ton of yards after the catch.
That kind of sequence should probably be easy to overturn once you get the play on camera with a good angle, right?
Wrong.
According to Pereira, the NFL officiating crew working the game couldn’t overturn the play on a coach’s challenge — even with a boundary camera angle showing Addison clearly stepping out of bounds — because not every stadium in the NFL has that camera angle, and it wouldn’t be fair to others. It would’ve apparently only been valid on a scoring play.
WHAT? Make that make sense.
Mike Pereira explains why officials couldn't use the boundary cam on a review.
"If a coach is challenged, you cannot use the boundary cam. There's not boundary cams in every stadium so there's a question of equity."pic.twitter.com/7i8wov4SxL
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) November 24, 2024
Do you mean to tell me the NFL won’t let refs overturn plays because its 20-billion-dollar industry hasn’t supplied a specific camera angle to every team in the league? That is the most NFL line of thinking I’ve ever heard.
What a preposterous and backward sports league all around that always makes things much more complicated than they have to be.