End of the First Quarter: 25 NFL officiating stories, Part 4

The Tuck Rule

We all learned about the Tuck Rule in the 2001 Divisional Playoffs, where referee Walt Coleman, correctly applied the Tuck Rule to what many thought was a Tom Brady fumble and game-clinching recovery by the Oakland Raiders. The Tuck Rule instantly became the “worst rule in sports.”

It was in the 1999 offseason that language was added to the rulebook as to when a quarterback checks on his attempt to pass when that pass is deemed to have ended. This provided more objective criteria for replay, which was just reinstituted under a new system that same year.

When a Team A player is holding the ball to pass it forward, any intentional forward movement of his hand starts a forward pass, even if the player loses possession of the ball as he is attempting to tuck it back toward his body. Also, if the player has tucked the ball into his body and then loses possession, it is a fumble.

The Tuck Rule lived on for 11 stubborn years, until it was finally abolished in the 2013 rules meetings.

Bill Vinovich: heart of a champion

Bill Vinovich joined the NFL in 2001 as a side judge and was made referee in 2004. After the 2006 season, he worked a playoff game and laid the groundwork for 2007. Vinovich was working out and felt severe back pain.

He went to the emergency room and discovered his life was in danger. He had an aortic aneurysm so severe, physicians later said that he had a 2 percent chance of surviving the next 48 hours. Vinovich survived, but the NFL did not clear him to officiate. His on field career was over.

Vinovich spent the next five years as a replay official and working in the league office as a grader and officiating supervisor. Doctors performed reconstructive surgery on his aorta, and eventually the NFL gave him permission to return to the field in 2012.

Vinovich established very quickly that he not only did not lose a step, but also he was the annual clubhouse leader at the position. He earned a playoff spot at the end of the comeback season and worked 3 Super Bowls and 5 conference championships since then.

Turnover at the head of officiating department

The officiating department was run by the steady hand of Art McNally for a generation of football fans. He left the field to lead the officiating department in 1968 in advance of the NFL merger with the AFL. He remained in that position until 1990 when Jerry Seeman took over.

As the calendar turned to 2000, Seeman was in his last season as director of officiating. While there were only 2 heads of the officiating department in the 25 years from 1974 to 1999, there was significant turnover for the subsequent 25 years.

Mike Pereira succeeded Seeman in 2001. He was elevated from director to vice president in 2004. He announced his retirement a year early, but the league was apparently struggling to fill that position and have Pereira’s successor work along side him for that year. Pereira worked through the 2009 season. After Pereira, the department has not gone more than 4 years without a leadership change.

Line judge Carl Johnson took over, but only remained in the position for 3 years before returning to the field.

In 2013, former director of replay Dean Blandino was hired as vice president of officiating. He was elevated to senior vice president in 2016 in the hopes of retaining him. It didn’t work, as Blandino left for Fox Sports in May 2017.

Al Riveron, who was Blandino’s deputy, became the senior vice president of officiating in 2017. His role was reduced to only replay in 2020, as the league brought in the Panthers interim coach Perry Fewell and retired referee Walt Anderson as additional senior vice presidents. The officiating triumvirate existed for just one season, as Riveron left the league hours before the first preseason game of 2021.

Anderson stepped down in 2024 so that his son, who was labeled as one of the top officiating prospects, could be hired. Anderson remains in a nonsupervisory role. Fewell is the lone senior vice president, but umpire Ramon George and replay official Mark Butterworth were hired as vice presidents under Fewell as part of a larger “Officiating Improvement Plan.”

It also returns the officiating department to the full leadership of former coaches, as it was for the 5 years prior to McNally under Mark Duncan and Joe Kuharich.

NFL Europe ends, a new development program begins

When NFL Europe was in existence under various names in 1991, 1992, and 1995 to 2007, it was a valuable tool for officiating under a concept created by its officiating head Art McNally. At the end of his tenure as the NFL officiating boss, he used the European circuit as a development league for officiating staff. Want to kick the tires on a hot college recruit? Give them a few weeks to work some NFL sanctioned games in Europe. Have an NFL official you want to try out for the referee position? Assign them to games that, in large part, have no impact on anything.

When the NFL E.U. dissolved, so did a crucial development tool for officiating. As part of the collective bargaining agreement signed with the officials union in 2012, a development program funded by the league would take a number of college recruits through NFL training camps and assign a few to some preseason games. Originally called the Advanced Development Program in 2013, and renamed Officiating Development Program in 2016, the development officials would get some valuable practice at the pro level and have seasoned mentors to assist them. Originally with 21 trainees, the program has now expanded to over 40 recruits, placed in four tiers of advancement potential.

The development program would also place officials in college invitational games, like the Senior Bowl and the East-West Shrine Bowl. Although there wasn’t full coordination from the NFL with the spring leagues that ran from 2019 through present, they do suggest some officials of interest to those officiating coordinators.

The program would undergo one more name change, after the vice president in charge of development and recruitment, Wayne Mackie, died suddenly in 2022. The Mackie Development Program continues, but without its venerable leader.

Replay is reborn. It morphs into a centralized replay, then adds replay assist.

Just days after the worldwide sigh of relief that the Y2K bug did not cause any widespread issues, the NFL’s second-generation replay system, not quite to its first birthday, faced two major tests in the postseason.

The lateral in the Music City Miracle in the AFC Wild Card Game between the Bills and Titans was a huge test. Was it a forward or backward pass? The decision to let it stand as a legal backward pass “gave replay credibility,” according to Bob Boylston, the replay official that day. In the NFC Championship Game two weeks later, Buccaneers receiver Bert Emanuel was ruled in replay to have an incomplete pass due to the tip of the ball touching the ground, thwarting a Bucs comeback attempt. The rule was clarified in the offseason to make that a catch.

The first-generation replay system was not rooted in a challenge-based system, but more like a “sky judge” position (to steal some modern terminology) to review anything. When replay was rebooted, the booth had jurisdiction over the final 2 minutes and overtime, and the coach had to challenge any other play.

Over the past 25 years, the replay system evolved significantly to help preserve some of the coach’s challenges in pivotal situations. First, scoring plays were subject to booth review (leading to a controversial Lions penalty for challenging a scoring play). Turnovers were also subject to booth jurisdiction.

In 2011, the lead member of the replay booth was actually termed a replay official (previously a “replay assistant” which is now the term for the second member of the replay crew). This was recognition that the replay booth was performing officiating functions.

Replay was expanded to make extra-point conversions and failed 4th downs under automatic booth review. The centralized replay center took over the role of issuing rulings in 2017, leading to a more consistent application of the replay rules.

Over time, technology expanded. Stadiums were rewired to take advantage of digital television signals. The centralized replay center moved from satellite feeds to fiber optics to reduce latency. In 2020, a new HawkEye system was implemented to replace the existing hardware.

HawkEye has two parts. One is what is known technically as an “ingest” system that pulls in and records all camera feeds. The other is the playback interface in which a review can commence immediately, sometimes before the play has even concluded, rather than waiting for the network to show a particular angle on TV. This opened up an avenue of “replay assist” which allows the replay official to make quick corrections to calls, spots, and clock time before the play clock reaches 20 seconds.

Replay assist was a compromise struck by the Competition Committee to utilize the current replay setup to make these small, but significant, corrections through the game. There was pressure to institute a sky judge, as implemented in many spring-league games, which would have a whole new set of protocols and grafts on a second interventionist role to the on-field crew. Replay assist does have limitations as to what it can jump in on, but it seems that the Competition Committee has generally struck the proper balance, with maybe a few tweaks here and there.

The HawkEye system has significantly improved review times of reviewable plays, compared to the grinding halts that the technologically insufficient 1986-1991 system languished under. Replay can even issue an “expedited replay” ruling before the referee views the replay himself if the evidence is clearly indisputable — although they do admit that a coach’s challenge that will definitely fail does not get an expedited ruling to preserve the coach’s ego.

In the end, replay is a tool in the toolbox. It is the claw end of the hammer, not the business end of the hammer. Pass interference (another entry in the End of the First Quarter series) didn’t fit in the construct of not reofficiating the play, and the attempt to do so withered on the vine when it was not extended after one trial season.