Should Coaches Be Able To Challenge Penalty Calls In The NFL?

This article was suggested due to some bad calls this season, especially for pass interference. There have been some pass plays that had obvious pass interference, whether offensive or defensive, that was easily missed but should have been called. With as competitive as the game is now, a single call like this could win or lose the game. We also have plenty of games where the coaches do not use their challenges at all. I think if the coaches want to use their challenges to get a penalty, or dispute one so it goes away, it is their choice. They are the ones risking the time out and possibly the chance to challenge something else later. Let’s say your team is losing by a touchdown and your quarterback gets sacked. Also on that same play a defensive player was off sides but it wasn’t called. Don’t you think it would be fair to let a coach challenge that so the game is called correctly? Isn’t that the whole point behind the challenges? We want the game to be called fair and to be able to fix the human error, but we limit it to just a few types of plays. If we are going to allow challenges the scope of them need to be widened to a lot more than just fumbles and completed passes. Otherwise I have a hard time seeing the point of having the system there.

We have already slowed the game down now by letting coaches challenge certain plays. Do we want to slow the game down more by adding more plays they can dispute? The problem with challenging penalties is that so many of them are subjective. What I might call holding, the referee might say they were just letting them play. A pass interference call is can be hard to call sometimes if both players are fighting for position. How long does someone have to hold on to the facemask before it is considered a penalty? Sure these rules are supposed to be plain and simple. We would like them to be obvious and easy to call. But if that was the case, then this argument would be pretty useless since they shouldn’t be missed if they were easy to call. I don’t know how many times I have been watching a game with a friend who thought a penalty should have been called that I said “no it was a good no call.” Right now the average game takes about 3 hours to play. A lot of times it even goes over that and will run into the start of the next game. If we start adding more things for coaches to dispute we could look at games going over 3 ½ hours. Not to mention that every time there is a challenge the networks break away for commercials. Just what I always wanted in my football games, more commercials and more Jimmy Football. Let’s leave it the what it is and let the referees decide what is a penalty.