Challenging a pass interference call will have existed in the NFL for just one season, after the league announced that it would not be bringing back the additional replay review for the 2020 year.
“We’re not going to vote on, because nobody is putting forward, the OPI/DPI review again,” Rich McKay, the Competition Committee Chairman, said on SiriusXM NFL Radio (via Pro Football Talk). “So that dies a natural death.”
The challenge was added to mixed reviews from this past season, stemming from the 2018 NFC Championship Game between the Los Angeles Rams and New Orleans Saints in which a rather obvious pass interference instance was not flagged. The inclusion of allowing coaches to challenge offensive and defensive pass interference this past year did not necessarily aid the issue, as many calls still went uncorrected or overcorrected.
The fact that the league is not even bringing the possibility of a vote to the table indicates just how little support there was widespread across the league for having replay review of pass interference in the first place.
The news comes on the same day that the NFL will release its 2020 schedule, despite possible complications created by the Coronavirus pandemic, which has forced other American sports leagues to shutter for the time being.
If the league is able to open on time and get back into action by August, coaches will have one less facet of the game to worry about being responsible for, as the officials on the field are again the only parties in charge of flagging for pass interference.
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