Mike Florio ,
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The NFL has many officiating issues, even if it chooses to ignore most of them.
Here’s one that could be easily fixed.
It happens when an extra point or a field goal involves the ball going over the uprights. Instant replay, by rule, is not available. The officials have to decide whether, when the ball passed over the top of the structure, it was within the inside edge of the yellow pole.
On Sunday, a fourth-quarter extra point attempt by the Texans kicker Ka’imi Fairbairn appeared to not pass within the imaginary line extending above the uprights. The one-point difference became critical, making the score 20-13 when it arguably should have been 19-13. The Colts, who lost 20-16, could have tied the game with a late field goal, if that point had not been awarded to the Texans.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Although making the uprights even higher than they are poses engineering and aesthetic challenges, there are other solutions.
One, put a wireless camera with a wide-angle lens at the top or each upright. With the proliferation of affordable camera technology, it would be cheap and easy to have a way to see where the ball was when it passed over the camera.
Two, install a thin beam atop each upright that would be activated before every kick. It would create a simulated extension of the apparatus, allowing replay review to decide whether the ball passes inside, outside, or through the yellow ray of light.
Third, use the existing array of Hawkeye cameras in the same way it’s currently employed (albeit surprisingly rarely) for virtual measurements. Multiple readers from other side of the Atlantic Ocean have pointed out that hurling has developed a system for doing exactly what the NFL needs — a way to triangulate the location of the ball in order to determine whether the kick was, or wasn’t, successful.
There’s a way to fix the problem that reared its head on Sunday. With so much technology available, the old-school, no-tech approach needs to be abandoned, whenever and wherever possible.
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