IT TOOK a while, but Sunday night on NBC John Madden finally took a strong stand on something.
'Skins-Ravens had again stopped, cold, to again consider an instant replay review, to again consider freeze-frame, super close-up evidence as to whether the ball came out before the carrier's knee or elbow hit or even brushed the field.
"I hate this," Madden said. "A fumble is a fumble. And this is a fumble. Every time we have one of these things, now, we have to stop and it has to be reviewed and it has to be challenged. I'd like to go back to when a guy gets hit and the ball comes out, it's fumble."
Amen and hallelujah!
Of course, Madden and the vast majority of the media blessed replay from its start. Most saw it only as they and the NFL wanted it to work - to reverse horrible calls. They didn't consider the ways it would wildly alter games in totally unintended ways.
But a few did. What Madden said Sunday on NBC was said on NBC 20 years earlier on its studio show, by the late Pete Axthelm. Of the new replay rule, he complained that what had for 75 years been a fumble was now a matter of a delayed second opinion.
The new rule, Axthelm lamented, would cause the nature of the game an unnatural death.
Today, the replay rule radically changes virtually every game, and in ways that most, including the NFL, never imagined and certainly never demanded.
With 5:10 left and the Steelers down, 13-6, to Dallas in Sunday's other national TV game, Ben Roethlisberger hit Nate Washington with a 21-yard pass. Perhaps. The ball, a tad under-thrown, may have been caught on the skip.
And that's when "replay rule" conditioning - for officials, coaches, players and viewers - kicked in.
The officials never gave a quick, clear indication as to whether it was a catch. As noted by Joe Buck, they'd seemed similarly indecisive, all game. Such was rarely apparent until the introduction of the replay rule. Now, it's common.
The ball eventually was spotted as a catch. OK, so next Fox surely would give us a replay or two, and Dallas a choice whether to challenge. Ah, but the replay rule changes everything. The Steelers went no huddle - to beat the rule.
Fox, its truck likely surprised, then seemed to get lost. It showed replays of the next two plays immediately after they occurred, but never a replay of the one that caused Pittsburgh to beat the replay rule - the only replay worth seeing!
The Steelers would win the game - in large part, perhaps, because they defeated a rule.
Even after years of tweaking to "iron out the kinks," the replay rule needs an overhaul. The winner of the last Super Bowl came perilously close to being determined by a totally unintended application of the rule.
Up 7-3 in the third, the Pats punted. During the three minutes of commercials that followed, the Giants' Chase Blackburn, running off the field, was detected to have been inches short of the sideline when the ball was snapped. The Pats threw a challenge flag. First down, Pats.
The NFL was given a reprieve when the Pats didn't score on that possession and ultimately lost the game. The NFL should have at that moment vowed that no game, let alone the championship, will ever again be determined by such unintended application of the replay rule.
But it didn't.
Meanwhile, networks post graphics giving coaches' success rates in replay challenges. Yet, we're never told how many challenge flags are returned because the challenges are inapplicable, because coaches still don't know the rule, thus throw guess flags at it.
While no fan ever vowed to abandon football unless there was a replay rule, the NFL's "cure" is rarely used to correct the disease it was designed to treat.
So why not at least tailor it to meet its original intent? No more challenges to determine 12 men on the field, whether the ball broke the plane, fumble calls that reasonably could go either way, whether the ball was being juggled when the receiver went out of bounds - on a two-yard pass - or just because the coach has nothing to lose.
Let the officials officiate. If they miss a 12-men call because they were busy watching the game, so be it.
Stop mostly using the rule as it was never intended to be used. Put a little football back in the football. Unless, of course, the NFL is again willing to allow the Super Bowl to be determined by tape of a guy caught doing 56 in a 55 zone.
