NFL Votes Down Making Roughing the Passer, Personal Fouls Reviewable

PHOENIX — The NFL voted down ideas that would make roughing the passer and personal fouls reviewable on Tuesday, Tom Pelissero of NFL Network reports.

The Los Angeles Rams asked for roughing the passer to become reviewable, but it did not pass in a league-wide setting. It earned some support league-wide, including from Broncos head coach Sean Payton, who believes that the NFL is not officiating the foul correctly.

“Roughing the passer, I’m not going to say it’s a crisis, but whatever is next,” Payton said. “Let’s say the crisis is level five, I’d say this is level three. It’s something that we got to be better at. So how do we handle that? So one of the items is being able to possibly challenge roughing the passer. I think that’s the one thing to me that stands out that is really up and down.”

However, Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin thought that a lot of emotions were often invoked within the thoughts behind the rule at the moment. As such, he seemed defensive about the entire proposition, and it seems that sentiment was held by others around the league.

“We looked at a lot of it and have discussed many parts of it because it is a hot-button topic,” Tomlin said. “There are a lot of emotions when those flags fall on the ground because it’s a significant play that occurs in significant moments. Based on the analysis that we saw man, I respect the level of officiating the play is given. Sometimes our reactions are just that, emotional.”

Meanwhile, the NFL will not even vote on making all personal fouls reviewable. The Detroit Lions withdrew the resolution after the roughing the passer resolution failed. So, it appears that penalties will once again not be reviewable. The last penalty to be reviewable was pass interference, but it ended up being scrapped after one season.