NFL open to idea of post-replay penalty calls, but it could open a Pandora's box

The NFL might have a way to throw more penalty flags during games in the future. At the very least they are open to the idea of discussing it. 

Dawn Aponte, the NFL's chief football administrative officer for football operations, said on Friday, via CBS Sports, that the league is open to the idea of throwing penalty flags after replay review for fouls that involve player safety.

Those fouls would include facemask calls, use of the helmet, roughing the passer, hip-drop tackles and unnecessary roughness.

Currently the NFL is allowed to use replay assist to pick up flags if replay shows something like a facemask was not grabbed. It is not able to throw a flag if it sees something uncalled on a replay. 

This could open frustrating Pandora's box for football fans, teams and players

On one hand, it is important to get calls correct. Nobody wants to have a big play called back (or created) because of a missed call. Nobody wants to lose a game as a result of that. The technology is there to fix mistakes, and it works in a lot of situations. 

But as we saw with the brief experiment with making pass interference a reviewable play, there is still a lot of gray area that comes into plays. Especially subjective plays.

A facemask is pretty black-and-white for the most part.

A helmet-to-helmet hit can be pretty objective. 

But when it comes to plays like roughing the passer and unnecessary roughness, there is still some subjectivity to them, and there are several calls made in real-time that are controversial. Imagine how controversial it will be if a borderline roughing the passer call is made on a replay review. It is a recipe for madness.

At this point, it is just something the NFL is open to. 

There is no formal rule proposal and nothing officially changed.

The league's competition committee will meet at the scouting combine in Indianapolis, with any new rule proposal that comes from it being put to a vote by the NFL's 32 owners.