NFL officials again make it clear they don’t like new review rule by refusing to penalize Baltimore Ravens’ Marlon Humphrey on obvious play.
With 5:56 left in the first quarter of the critical AFC matchup between the 7-2 Ravens and the 6-3 Texans, Houston quarterback Deshaun Watson uncorked a deep pass to receiver DeAndre Hopkins down the right side of the field toward the end zone. Hopkins was covered by Baltimore cornerback Marlon Humphrey, one of the NFL’s best defensive backs. However, on this play, Humphrey was outmatched by Hopkins’ size/speed combination, as many defenders have been throughout Hopkins’ career.
The result was what looked like obvious pass interference to prevent a touchdown.
Obvious, perhaps — but not so to referee Alex Kemp and his crew. Pass interference was not called, despite the fact that Humphrey’s hands were all over Hopkins, he pushed Hopkins as the ball was coming in, and he wasn’t playing the ball anywhere near the catch point.
Texans coach Bill O’Brien challenged the non-call, under the first-year rule that allows coaches to challenge pass interference calls and non-calls. However, O’Brien probably knew how this was going to go. The NFL’s head offices in New York have rarely agreed to overturn such calls and non-calls. Per NFL Research, through the first nine weeks of the season, there were 53 challenges, with five calls or non-calls overturned. That’s a 90.6% failure rate for coaches, and coaches should be able to expect a more consistent reading of the rules before and after the fact.
In a major game that could decide the top of the AFC’s postseason order, the NFL has once again refused to do its job regarding a rule that was passed by the competition committee. If NFL Senior Vice President of Officiating Al Riveron and his staff are unhappy about their officials being called into question by this new review rule, the time to make that clear was during league meetings. This smacks of collusion in the officiating community, and it’s a very bad look for the NFL.
After the game, Hopkins made his opinion clear.
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar has also covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”
