Bengals owner Mike Brown has been a longtime opponent of using instant replay in the NFL, going back decades. So it’s no surprise that when he was asked about the latest Competition Committee proposal, to have the replay assistant review every scoring play, Brown sighed.
“You know how I feel about instant replay,” Brown said. “It’s marvelous how complicated we can make it. I don’t have any objection to the guy upstairs saying this play needs to be reviewed. That takes the makeup challenge away from the coaches. That’s supposed to balance out the frequency of challenges. In my book, fewer challenges is better than more because I like the game to be uninterrupted. I like it to proceed. And I know the arguments for instant replay and yet I think it misses one key thing: It slows [the game] down.”
That’s consistent with how Brown has always viewed replay. In 1990, Brown said, “We believe instant replay creates as many or more problems than it solves.” In 2000, Brown was the only member of the Competition Committee to vote against continuing to use replay.
Now, Brown says, he sees the game being stopped for replay reviews that just add to the uncertainty.
“In other words, you can call these plays either way,” Brown said. “They’re that close. In super slow motion? Yeah, it might be this instead of that, and in my book, why bother? Let the official on the field call it. It’s that close and let the game proceed. It all balances out over time. But that isn’t where we are. That was a fight for long ago, but I’ve never changed my basic view of it.
Brown knows he’s lost the replay battle. But that doesn’t mean he thinks he’s wrong.