Challenge Record Says Bears Can Use an Extra Official
Still fresh in everyone's memory is the horrendous blown call against Cordarrelle Patterson in the Bears' loss to Green Bay for making contact too early on punt coverage.
Certainly Broncos fans will never forget the blown roughing-the-passer call against Bradley Chubb to set up Mitchell Trubisky's pass to Allen Robinson before Eddy Pineiro's game-winning 53-yard field goal. Of course the Broncos fans will conveniently forget the two blown roughing calls against the Bears earlier in the game leading to points.
It happens every year: the defensive pass interference call on Trey Burton against Miami in 2018 wiping out a game-turning touchdown, the famed process of the catch call against Detroit's Calvin Johnson at Soldier Field—blown calls are a rite of fall.
It's possible something could change with this in 2020. The league is going to consider adding a "booth umpire" and a senior technology adviser to the referee to assist the officiating crew.
It's uncertain if the officials just don't understand how to use Windows or what the deal with this is, but the booth umpire would serve as an eighth game official.
This is not a proposal put forth by the competition committee for acceptance but was made as a recommendation for study in preseason, so preseason games could use the eighth official if accepted.
How much the extra official could intervene and what for remains a bit sketchy.
Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated compared him to a SkyJudge but said he wouldn't have power to stop a game and would be working under the referee with access to replays. The result is it would give the crew access to HD reviews of replays.
Wait, don't we already have replay review?
It sounds like a way for some official to collect a check for not really doing anything.
It's a good thing this is only recommended for use in preseason because it sounds like a chaotic mess and something which would work about as well as offensive and defensive pass interference review, which thankfully won't be done in games this year.
Bringing in one more official to walk all over everyone else is the last thing they need in an NFL game. It's already chaotic and hectic enough for the head official when dealing with replay challenge and this would only add another layer of lunacy.
From the Bears' standpoint, they haven't yet mastered how to even use replay so they probably shouldn't concern themselves with such things.
Matt Nagy so far is 2-for-7 on replay challenges, 28% and the worst of all Bears coaches after Dave Wannstedt, those who had ability to challenge calls. It's a rather small sample size, but it's the same number of seasons Marc Trestman had and he was a masterful 57% or 4 of 7.
Lovie Smith never did have a knack for this sort of thing and came in at 32% for nine seasons (22 of 69), just below John Fox's 35% (6 of 17). Dick Jauron hit on 40% of his challenges (10 of 25).
Both Fox and Smith seemed to be doing even worse than they were because their opponents were doing so much better. While Smith was hitting on 32%, Bears opponents then made good on 45% of their challenges (33 of 74). While Fox was at 35%, opposing coaches were making good on 47% (8 of 17).
Considering how poorly Bears coaches have performed at this, maybe that Skyjudge fellow isn't such a poor idea after all.
Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven
