In the CFL, teams can challenge judgment penalty calls. Why not the NFL?

It was pass interference, clearly. No one is disputing that. The New Orleans Saints should be getting ready for the Super Bowl right now, because if Los Angeles’ Nickell Robey-Coleman is called for PI, then the Saints have a first down at the 5-yard line, they’re running some time off the clock and then kicking a short field goal to beat the Rams in the NFC championship game.

That play should push the NFL toward getting out of its own way with its replay rules.

The ability to challenge any play really should be open to discussion. It should be on the table, just because we can see everything now.

The technology is there – we have the luxury of slowing it down and seeing it frame by frame, and there are amazing camera angles that are available. Whatever angle you want, you can see it. There’s a camera on every player on the field, so there should be no reason why a coach can’t challenge anything that he thinks has been missed.

The league just needs to expand the number of plays that can be reviewed, and if a team still gets two challenges it’s really not going to impact the time of game.

But if that’s a concern, ask a Saints fan.

The crazy thing is, if this were the Canadian Football League, the Saints would be getting ready to play in the Grey Cup.

In the CFL, pass interference and other judgment calls are subject to challenge.

A coach can challenge pass interference, roughing the passer or kicker, illegal blocks.

In the NFL, replay is limited to objective calls – turnovers, whether a runner crossed or didn’t cross the goal line, whether a runner was in bounds or out of bounds, whether a pass was complete or incomplete, whether a runner was down by contact.

I think there’s something to be said for giving each team the ability to replay an entire play within the current structure – teams get two challenges per game, and they get a third if the first two successfully overturn calls on the field; the play has to begin before the two-minute warning and a team can challenge only if it has at least one timeout.

In that structure, a coach can throw the red flag and tell the official, “I think you missed a pass interference here.” The referee can go back and look at it and maybe say, “Yeah, you know what, it’s pass interference,” and change the call.

It could be an egregious holding call where a guy gets tackled rushing the passer or a roughing the passer that’s called where the defender barely touches the quarterback’s face mask, like we had called against the Chiefs in the AFC championship game. Chris Jones hit Tom Brady’s mask. I get that. But he barely touched it. Like the Saints-Rams no-call, it’s the kind of play that officials should be able to review. It’s something the NFL could definitely look at during the offseason, just to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.

What else can change? It can be argued the NFL needs to use full-time officials, or needs to use more officials. The more officials argument, I understand that in theory. But in New Orleans an official was six feet from that play and he didn’t call it. More officials isn’t going to fix that.

The NFL certainly will look at all of that after the season – Saints coach Sean Payton is on the competition committee, you can bet he’ll be broaching it. There will be plenty of incentive in that room to look at changing the system, and expanding replay challenges is the best-case scenario.

The coaches still would have to be smart about what they challenge, but I think for the most part they would get that right – it wouldn’t be used on something borderline, it’d be something they believe clearly was missed.

It’s only a good thing if they can get some of these calls corrected.

David Carr answers your questions

Each week, David Carr will answer a reader’s question in his column. Submit your questions by email to sports@fresnobee.com (please put “David Carr” in the subject line)