Early in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s wild-card playoff game at U.S. Bank Stadium, Minnesota Vikings tight end T.J. Hockenson found himself fighting for first-down yardage. As his forward progress slowed, Vikings guard Ezra Cleveland shoved Hockenson and four New York Giants defenders toward the line to gain.
Referee Adrian Hill signaled a first down. Giants coach Brian Daboll soon threw his red flag to challenge the spot. But 52 seconds after he made his initial ruling, Hill announced: “Before the challenge flag was thrown and after a crew discussion, it was determined that the runner short of the line to gain.” Daboll got his challenge flag back, leaving the Vikings to decide if they should go for it on fourth down.
That episode was a high-profile example of an initiative the NFL began at the start of the 2021 season, referred to interchangeably as “replay assist” and “expedited review” during television broadcasts. The rule allows the in-stadium replay official — or someone watching from the league’s command center in New York City — to inform the referee in real time of a clear and obvious mistake for a defined list of objective calls, such as whether a runner was down short of the first-down marker. The process, powered in part by a technology upgrade installed last year, skips the lengthier formal review process and has made a significant impact on NFL game flow.
Total replay stoppages have dropped 25% since the start of the 2021 season, compared to the previous three year averages. That trend culminated in an average game time during the 2022 regular season of 3 hours, 1 minute and 40 seconds — nearly four minutes shorter than in 2020 and the lowest since 1993.
You can view this development in a variety of ways, depending on your opinion of replay and the current state of NFL officiating. It doesn’t necessarily mean that officials are getting more of their original calls right, and conversely, there is no evidence that the league is trying to phase out replay altogether.
What has happened is the league has been successful in streamlining the officials’ backstop, as well as creating disincentives for coaches to make time-consuming formal challenges.
Although it is not announced formally during games, replay officials used the new rule to correct on-field crews roughly once in every two games during the 2021 season. (Figures for the 2022 season are not yet available.) Speaking on the topic last season, ESPN officiating analyst John Parry said: “I don’t think there’s any doubt that the number of challenges has been reduced and impacted by the ability to fix some things on their own pretty quickly. And that’s a good thing, because otherwise most of them would have required a coach’s challenge to correct in the past.”
Indeed, a decrease in coaches’ challenges has largely accounted for the drop in total replay stoppages. (Replay officials can launch a formal review after a scoring play or a turnover, or in the final two minutes of a game.) Coaches challenges have dropped from an average of 174 per season in 2018-20 to 131 in both 2021 and 2022. A failed challenge requires forfeiture of a timeout, so the replay assist rule has reduced the instances where coaches — who all prefer to preserve their timeouts — must decide whether the moment is significant enough to take that risk.
The replay assist rule coincided with an upgrade to Hawk-Eye technology that allows replay officials to access every camera angle instantly, rather than waiting for them to be shown on a broadcast. Dan Cash, the managing director of Hawk-Eye’s North America region, said in 2021 that the software plugs directly into the broadcaster’s truck and can display up to 48 camera angles on demand, although most games have far fewer cameras on site.
Neither the league nor broadcasters liked that replay review depended in part on a director finding and airing the best angles quickly enough to beat the next snap. So the NFL began experimenting with ways to access the camera feeds directly during the 2019 season and had planned to implement the change in 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic delayed implementation.
“This is what a lot of the leagues have been trending toward — having their own control of the video,” Cash said. “This gives them the camera angles quicker, without the wait. It lets them make the decision and speed up the game. That’s the driver of this technology.”
