LAWYERBALL 2K26: Tuesday Open Thread

The owners have met. The Book of Rules has been opened. IT’S REV’S TIME TO SHINE, BITCHES!

In the face of a looming Referee Lockout/Strike/Work Stoppage, the NFL owners are taking their most brazen steps to centralize the ability for League Headquarters in New York to directly affect on-field action since.. um…ever. Two rules allowing replay officials to positively intervene in games passed the owners’ vote.

The first takes effect no matter what, and per ESPN “replay officials in New York will have the authority to both disqualify a player and direct that a penalty be enforced even if on-field officials had not thrown a flag, in the case of either a flagrant football act or non-football act.” Non-football act, in this case, means DK Metcalfing a fan, for instance.

Not a terrible idea unto itself, but it’s got a very PATRIOT Act “just the tip” slippery slope aspect to it: as soon as League Central can mandate a flag be thrown for one type of penalty, it’s essentially inevitable that they will expand this to other penalties until it utterly cripples the game. This is what happened with “normal” replay, when they absolutely choked themselves out by allowing pass interference to be reviewed in 2019.

Speaking of the universally-panned experiment in PI replay: guess what they are going to try again? Yes, the second rule includes (but is not limited to) the ability for New York to order a replacement ref to pick up a flag thrown for PI! Oh, wait, but only for “tangled feet when both players or neither player are playing the ball”.

This can only end well.

Again, per ESPN:

According to verbiage in the rule, staff members in New York could alert a replacement referee if they see clear and obvious evidence of an uncalled foul for roughing the passer, intentional grounding or an act that would normally lead to disqualification.

Those staff members would also be permitted to alert replacement referees that a flag shouldn’t have been thrown if there is clear and obvious video evidence that “at least one element of the foul called is not present,” according to the verbiage.

Fouls eligible for this alert include: twisting, pulling or turning the face mask; roughing the passer; intentional grounding; horse-collar tackles; illegal contact; pass interference; and disqualification.

This rule only takes effect if the regular refs are replaced, and is essentially a ham-fisted attempt to take away leverage from the officials in negotiation- that leverage being “remember how bad things went with replacement refs last time?” In case you blacked out or are Trent Green, look up “Fail Mary”

In fact, I assume that’s literally how the negotiations were going before they broke off.

NFL NEGOTIATOR: You can’t seriously want this much of a pay increase!

REF NEGOTIATOR: Fail Mary.

NFL NEGOTIATOR: And this? This demand for “relaxing foot massages during every TV time out”?

REF NEGOTIATOR: Fail. Mary.

2012 early-season football was literally unwatchable. They figure if staff in New York have the ability to remote control the scabs, maybe they can prevent the most egregious cases from forcing the league to capitulate.

On the bright side, the only evidence I have found lately that we don’t live in the Absolute Darkest Timeline is that this press leak didn’t include the phrase “leveraging AI powered by AWS”.