Patriots coach Bill Belichick believes that coaches should be able to use the red flag to challenge any and all rulings on the field. While the NFL isn’t ready to go completely in that direction, coaches could soon be able to challenge one specific type of play that isn’t currently reviewable.
Per a league source, momentum is building for allowing coaches to challenge personal fouls.
The thinking is that personal fouls would become reviewable only via the coach’s challenge, and not automatically.
The potential expansion would come in the offseason, most likely at the annual meetings in March or during the May ownership meetings.
Both New England and Washington have been lobbying aggressively for coaches to have the ability to challenge more rulings via the red flag that gets thrown onto the field. At some point, coaches perhaps would indeed have the ability to challenge anything and everything, with maybe another challenge or two to be used per game.
Don’t be surprised if, as an initial step, the coaches have the ability to challenge personal fouls. Eventually, that could expand to other types of currently non-reviewable calls.
UPDATE 1:17 p.m. ET 9/29/14: NFL Network reported earlier on Sunday that personal fouls could become reviewable in 2015. While the report lacked some of the details mentioned above, including the likelihood that personal fouls will be reviewed only by coach’s challenge and not automatically, the NFLN report served as the starting point for our reporting. So I should have mentioned the NFL Network report last night, even though NFLN, ESPN, FOX, CBS, and the Associated Press routinely use our reports as the starting point for their own reporting without giving us proper credit. We’ve always tried to apply a higher standard than the standard that is applied to PFT. On Sunday night, I failed to do that.