Defensive pass interference could be 15 yards

NFL executive V.P. of football operations Troy Vincent says there is interest in making defensive pass interference a 15-yard penalty.

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In the past, some teams have lobbied for DPI to be changed from a spot-foul to a 15 yard walkoff. There hasn’t been much of a push to actually make that happen in recent years, but now that may have changed. According to an article by Mike Florio for Pro Football Talk, there is some exploration by the league in turning DPI into a 15 yard foul. It’s actually being investigated as a possible alternative to making the penalty subject to a replay review.

On one hand it takes a little of the sting out of a bad call. Instead of say, a 30 yard spot foul due to a dubious call, instead teams get 15 yards. However, it raises a new issue. If you’re a defensive back and your receiver gets behind you and you’re about to get burned deep, what do you do? It’s going to give plenty of incentive to just tackle the receiver and take the 15 yards, rather than risk getting burned deep for twice that.

In other words, there’s a big potential drawback to making that move to a 15 yard penalty. If that’s the solution then it still makes more sense to make DPI subject to replay review, which is what the CFL did last year. Detractors are typically concerned about the extra reviews slowing down the game even more than it already has been in recent years.

Vincent added another reason.

"“We do understand reviewing what was called on the field,” Vincent said. “For a coach to potentially challenge something that was not called, we run the risk of creating fouls. ‘Yeah, that was a hold. Yeah, that was an illegal hands to the face.’ ” (via NFL.com)"

Basically he’s saying that making every play subject to review could create fouls as the officials see things in slow-motion. You can imagine how much THAT would slow down the game. Further, making fouls reviewable period, would undermine the officials who have to make hard calls in real time.

DPI enforcement is once again a big topic of discussion before next season, after the Lions controversial loss to the Cowboys in the playoffs. It was the same last offseason as teams protested what they believed was widespread DPI by the Seahawks.

Another possibility as suggested by Florio, is creating two tiers of DPI, similar to how there are two fouls for roughing and running into the kicker. The lower tier could be DPI from grabbing or incidental contact, while, the higher tier could be obvious intentional contact, such as the tackling from behind previously mentioned. The latter could be a spot foul while the former could be the aforementioned 15 yards.

There’s probably no perfect situation, but there’s plenty of argument against widespread replays on fouls too.

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