When the Packers play the Falcon tonight in Atlanta, they’ll be paying close attention to their opportunities to pay close attention to questionable plays.
Tom Silverstein of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel recently explained that the Packers are concerned about the speed with which replay evidence is made available to their assistant coaches for assessment of whether head coach Mike McCarthy should throw the red flag onto the Georgia Dome field.
That said, McCarthy is steering clear of any public complaints regarding any potential shenanigans that may or may not have influenced his staff’s ability to let him know whether to challenge a questionable play during the regular-season game between the two teams in the same venue.
“I’m not worried about it,” McCarthy said.
That’s not what he said after the day after the November 28 game, which included an apparent trap on a key fourth-day play by Falcons tight end Tony Gonzalez. Which the Packers didn’t get a chance to see before the next play started.
“My understanding was a play or two later, whatever the timing was, when it finally did come in the box, that there was movement on the catch, and that’s really off of a TV angle, a totally different angle that we did not have access to,” McCarthy said at the time. “There was really no information for me to consider challenging that play.”
Asked whether his team had trouble like that on the road in the past, McCarthy said, “It’s part of the game. We’re not going to do down that road.”
Still, per Silverstein, McCarthy had G.M. Ted Thompson go down that road after the game, and the front office looked into the situation.
Silverstein points out that the Falcons don’t have a reputation for cheating. But Silverstein also points out that the Buccaneers lost power on their coach-to-quarterback communication system during a crucial drive late in a 27-21 loss to the Falcons.
Regardless of whether the devil has gone down to the Georgia Dome, the league needs to craft a comprehensive system for ensuring that teams have access to replays before the next play starts. The replay official should be sitting with a replay assistant from each team, and the replay official should have the ability to alert the referee to prevent the next play from starting until the replay assistants have had a chance to see a meaningful angle of a potentially questionable call.
