In late November, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said that there was a chance that the league would change the rule penalizing teams and barring replay reviews if a coach throws a challenge flag on a play already set for replay review.
According to Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network, any such change will have to wait until the offseason. Rapoport reports that the NFL plans to discuss the rule at Wednesday’s league meeting, but that there’s no expectation that a rule change would be implemented for this year’s postseason.
The rule wasn’t discussed all that much until Falcons coach Mike Smith and Lions coach Jim Schwartz both cost their teams 15 yards and eliminated the possibility of a review by throwing the flags earlier this year. Schwartz really drew attention to the rule by throwing it after officials obviously missed that Texans running back Justin Forsett was down before running for an 81-yard touchdown on Thanksgiving.
Whether or not you keep the 15-yard penalty for throwing the flag unnecessarily, the rule should be changed to allow reviews of the calls. The whole point of the replay system is to make sure that calls are correct and, as the Thanksgiving episode made clear, this rule gets in the way of that.