I am interested in everybody's thoughts on the new rule that scoring play reviews come from the booth. Anything close gets reviewed. It took a touchdown off the board for Houston at a critical juncture last night.
I am all for getting the call right, but I think this is a bad idea. There was already a mechanism in place to overturn bad calls that was working well. It was called a challenge. A coach could decide whether it was worth stopping the game over. If it came in the last 2:00 of a half or overtime, then the booth could call it.
What I do not like is stopping the game over every slightly borderline call. That really messes up the flow of the game. The head coaches all have staff in the booth watching replays and radioing down whether to challenge a play. If it is important enough, the coach will do that.
I also do not like the subjectivity only allowing the booth to review calls has. They tried that in college, and it failed. They eventually gave coaches challenges. There were times when a call obviously needed to be reviewed that the booth did not choose to look at. There were other times where a team had to burn a timeout because it took the booth so long to call fo a review of an important play. Mark my words. At some point this year, there is going to be an issue where the replay officials will not call for a replay on a play where they obviously should, and it will cost a team where a coach could challenge under the old rule.