Perhaps the biggest story of the NFL playoffs was the non-call in the NFC Championship Game. The Los Angeles Rams should've been flagged for pass interference, and the New Orleans Saints almost certainly would've advanced to the Super Bowl had it been called.
Talk about the non-call consumed the sports world, and dominated media coverage leading up to the Super Bowl. The controversy sparked a new round of calls for the league to make some penalties reviewable. Many prominent coaches and commentators weighed in in favor of revising the rules, and the league announced the competition committee would take a look.
The competition committee is meeting this week in Indianapolis, and the news isn't too good if you were hoping for changes, according to Kevin Seifert of ESPN. Giants owner John Mara, a member of the committee, said he's “not sensing a lot of support for making changes.”
“Officials are just human. They're going to miss calls from time to time. … To think that we're going to be a system where calls are always going to be corrected from New York or from upstairs, I just don't think we're there or even close to being there”, Mara explained.
Green Bay Packers president Mark Murphy echoed Mara's statements, saying “we'll study, but I don't think anything is imminent that something will change.” It sounds like things will more or less stay the same for the 2019 season. Despite influential figures like Bill Belichick and Sean Payton clamoring for change, the league isn't willing to budge.
Pass interference penalties are the most hotly disputed aspect of the game, and it seems like they'll remain a judgment call for now. If another prominent incident like what took place in the Rams/Saints game happens again though, the committee might face overwhelming pressure to come up with something.
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