NFL owners and coaches have arrived in Phoenix at the NFL Annual Meeting. There's a lot on the agenda, including 23 rule change proposals. Thirteen of those proposals have to do with expanding instant replay.
If the Competition Committee has anything to do with it, none of those proposals will pass. The Committee released a statement on Monday saying they don't support any of the proposals because of "unforeseen negative effects" for on-field officiating. The Committee says that instant replay was never intended to handle subjective plays, just correct objective mistakes.
In theory, rules could be passed without the support of the Competition Committee. In practice, it's now hard to imagine any major changes to instant replay this season. There just isn't enough support.
Steelers president Art Rooney II spoke at length about the issue to the Steelers team website.
"In terms of what we see on the agenda so far, as you probably know, there are a lot of different proposals that have to do with instant replay," Rooney told Steelers.com. "I personally am not really in favor of any of them. In general, I just don't think we need to increase the number of interruptions we have in our game at this point.
"I think the instant replay system is working fine. Sure, it would be nice to have different and more plays reviewed, but you have to do that in the context of how many can you really fit into a game and not wind up with a four-hour game."
The proposals range from making all plays reviewable to expanding replay for personal foul penalties. But they are all likely to fail.
In short: This NFL Annual Meeting might not include much in the way of dramatic innovation to the game's rules.
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