Derek Mortensen/Electric Umbrella
Knowing it faced some challenges with its challenge process, the CFL has decided to tweak things slightly.
The timing of coaches’ challenges and what can be challenged are among the changes being recommended by the league’s rules committee. The suggested changes will be forwarded to the CFL’s competition committee and then to the board of governors for approval.
Coaches will no longer be allowed to throw challenge flags following a commercial timeout. The coaches must challenge plays in the first 30 seconds of a TV break, a change which the league hopes will improve the experiences of fans at games or watching at home.
The rules committee suggested the league retain a measure enacted last season that forces a head coach to put a timeout at stake when he challenges a play. A lost challenge would result in a lost timeout.
The league also is looking to change what can be challenged in terms of roughing the passer. The hope is that fewer challenge flags will be thrown, which would improve the flow of games.
“Last year we allowed any act of unnecessary roughness against a quarterback to be challenged, which got a bit confusing because it went beyond the bounds of just roughing the passer,” Glen Johnson, the CFL’s senior vice-president of football, said Wednesday at the Queensbury Centre. “What we’re doing this year is we’re narrowing that to the strict definition of roughing the passer.
“Only things that are related to the safety of the quarterback when he’s in the act of passing or he’s a potential passer will be reviewable this year.”
Infractions against the passer that occur behind the line of scrimmage, including grabbing the facemask or horse-collar tackles, would no longer be challengeable.
Things that happen when the quarterback is across the line of scrimmage as a runner or on a QB sneak also would not be challengeable.
As well, the rules committee examined the issue of challenges for illegal contact, but decided to keep that foul on the list of challengeable plays.
Data collected by the committee determined that challenges for illegal contact dropped by 50 per cent last season when a coach had to put a timeout on the line. As well, the magnitude of an illegal-contact call convinced the committee to keep it challengeable.
“What we really want replay to do is we want it available for the 2015 Grey Cup,” said Johnson, referring to a penalty called in that season’s CFL title game after a video replay was conducted. “If we take out something like illegal contact and there’s an egregious illegal contact missed in a Grey Cup game and we’re not able to challenge that or fix that, are we doing justice to the game?”
The rules committee also wants to increase the role of its video officials, who can help officiating crews correct calls that were mistakenly made.
Last season, video officials helped officials pick up flags that were thrown in error 10 times and the rules committee believes the video officials can continue to provide that service.
What won’t happen, though, is video officials still will not call penalties that weren’t seen by the officiating crews.
“What we don’t want to do is start officiating a game in its entirety from the Command Centre,” Johnson said. “We think that’s a very dangerous precedent, a slippery slope.
“But once a flag is down and the game is stopped, we’re going to adjudicate that. The intent there is to just make sure whatever’s called is correct.”
On the player safety front, the rules committee is recommending to the league that penalties for low blocks on kick plays or changes of possession should go from 10 yards to 15 yards.
