Looking back 30 years at the start of replay in the NFL
Instant replay is so ingrained in modern professional football that it's become strategy. A knowledge of when to employ replay challenges is an aspect of coaching that can decide the outcome of games. It has undoubtedly changed how fans watch games. The expectation of exactitude in officiating is among the defining characteristics about the NFL's audience.
Seemingly each year, use of replay expands. In 2016, 30 years after replay was introduced to NFL, the league is allowing communication during reviews – on matters of penalty enforcement, proper down, foul spotting and status of the game clock – between on-field officials and members of the NFL's officiating department in New York, permanently adopting a change implemented during the 2015 postseason. This past spring, the Baltimore Ravens proposed making all plays reviewable with the exception of holding, interference, illegal contact, illegal use of hands, illegal hits to quarterbacks and kickers, and unsportsmanlike conduct.
Several head coaches, including Bill Belichick and Ron Rivera, believe just about all plays should be reviewable. Within a few years, they may very well have their wish.
In the wake of the missed roughing the passer penalties committed against Cam Newton during the season opening game, there is once again a push to make helmet-to-helmet hits reviewable.
Whether that ends up happening, it won't be decided until next off-season.
That is the legacy of review of the NFL. Once it was implemented 30 years ago, fans got used to the precision it provides and began insisting on scientific perfection in how calls are made. In some ways, that's part of the issue with the ongoing saga of what constitutes a catch. While replay can clarify what happened on a play in some cases, in others it just shows the fundamental flaws in how the rule is written.
For the most part, replay has been a boon for the sport and the NFL has been at the forefront of its use in major professional sports. Replay didn't make its official debut in Major League Baseball until 2008, whereas the NFL had already been using it for a second time for nearly a decade by that point. The NHL added replay for determining goals in the early '90s while the NBA first brought on replay in the early Aughts.
The NFL actually first experimented with the idea of replay in the '70s, though the technology at that point was too expensive and the system required more cameras to be effective than broadcasters were using at the time.
As with how the NFL recently increased the distance of extra point attempts, the league tested it out in the preseason in 1985, a year before it was approved by a vote of 23-4 (one team abstained) for regular season use. Replay made its regular season debut in a Week 1 game between the Cleveland Browns and the defending champion Chicago Bears, as a review upheld a fumble recovered in the end zone by the Browns for a touchdown. At that time, replay was only concerned with determining possession, whether a player went out of bounds or crossed the goal line, or easily detectable infractions like having too many men on the field.
The biggest concern around replay, dating back to those first experiments in the '70s, was that it would make games protracted affairs through extensive delays. But when replay was first used in the NFL, there were no coaching challenges, so reviews were initiated by an upstairs replay official or the refs working the games. That first season, there were 1.6 reviews per game, which is roughly on par with the amount seen in recent years.
There was a prominent hiccup that first year. In a game between the Chiefs and Raiders, a replay official overturned an Oakland touchdown reception but the referee, who communicated with the upstairs official through a walkie-talkie, heard "complete" when the official said "incomplete" and the score was upheld. Oakland ended up winning the game by a touchdown.
There were also concerns about removing the human element from the game. Fans had a hard time accepting when replay could alter the outcome of a contest, as it did during a 1989 game between the Packers and the Bears, which was dubbed "the instant replay game" after review overturned an initial call on the field that Don Majkowski had stepped over the line of scrimmage to throw a go-ahead touchdown pass in the final minute of the game.
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The early version of replay was also not as precise as today's version, even by the league's admission. The NFL conceded that 10 percent of the 90 reviews done in the 1991 season were incorrect. Then-Eagles owner Norman Braman described instant replay as a worthwhile idea that didn't work in practice. While some pressed for more time to improve the system, 17 owners voted against renewing the use of replay after the 1991 season, leaving instant replay out of football until 1999, when it was brought back with the concept of coaches challenges by a vote of 28-3.
Technology has improved greatly in the intervening years, and the NFL has added further wrinkles to please coaches, like a third challenge issued to those who are successful in their first two challenges in a game. Still, it wasn't until 2007 that the NFL voted to make replay a permanent game, obviating the need for yearly renewals. It helped that the league switched to high-definition technology for its video system that same year.
Fans have the benefit of increasingly sophisticated television broadcasts, meaning there will always be intense scrutiny on the efficacy of review. Nevertheless, the technology isn't the problem. While cameras may not be able spot everything in a rapid-moving play with a pile of bodies, more often than not the problem with replay is that it exposes the limitation of rules.
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