Pete Carroll changes, wants instant replay used in NFL officiating as much as possible
The NFL’s oldest coach may not be all leather helmets and run 3 yards in a cloud of dust, after all.
Pete Carroll wants the newest, most radical use of instant replay yet in the league.
The 72-year-old Seahawks coach says he is in favor of what Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay proposed recently — using instant replay to review all penalties, non-penalties and all calls in the final 2 minutes of games.
Not only that, Carroll wants to use all technology available as much as possible, for all calls.
“As long as we’re subject to the replay mode, I think they should get things right,” Carroll said Wednesday, as his Seahawks (5-3) prepared to host the Washington Commanders (4-5) Sunday at Lumen Field (1:25 p.m., channel 13).
That’s opposite of how Carroll thought and felt decades ago, in the early iterations of instant replay’s use in officiating NFL games.
The league first used instant replay in limited ways on officials calls in 1986. The current system using coaches’ challenges and replay to adjudicate them began in 1999.
“Now, I would’ve told you for years and years and years, I would rather put it on the officials to call the game and let’s keep the game going. I liked it better when it was like that,” Carroll said. “But now that I’ve grown up and not kicking and screaming about it, I think we should use it.
“They’re trying to help as much as they can, more than ever. I think they just keep expanding their effect, because we need to get it right.”
Carroll is one of the more active NFL coaches who ping the league office pretty much weekly, sometimes moments after a game, to ask for explanations of officials’ rulings and rules interpretations from games. And not just from Seahawks losses.
One of his recent queries to the league’s officiating office was about a hands-to-the-face penalty off the snap on Seattle cornerback Riq Woolen away from an incomplete pass late in his team’s win over Cleveland two games ago.
The Seahawks were so bad last weekend in getting smashed 37-3 at Baltimore there wasn’t much for Carroll to ask the league about in the officiating realm.
“We need to do things right and not have to live with issues and stuff that we could have (changed, then) after the game, griping and moaning and all that,” Carroll said. “So, if they think that they could do it, they could handle it and have enough crew to handle all the games and see it, that’s a big statement for them to do every play. But I think it would be in the best interest of getting things right.
“That’s really what we’d like to do.”
Carroll would even get rid of measurements with the archaic chains clipped to the bottom of the first-down markers. The technology exists to put chips in football and laser lines extending from the yard marker to trigger a signal when the ball crosses a line to gain for a first down.
Carroll says, bring that on, too — and perhaps not just limit reviewing everything to the final 2 minutes of games, either.
“Yep. I’d go with that,” Carroll said, “and now that we’re that far into it, let’s go.”
