NBC Sports’ Mike Florio wrote a story hours after the Chiefs’ 32-29 win over the Bills in the AFC Championship Game, asking the NFL to embrace technology when spotting a ball.
Bills quarterback Josh Allen was stuffed short on fourth-and-inches in the fourth quarter on Sunday, and that call by the game officials and the ensuing review have been widely discussed this week.
“The technology exists to do it right. The only question is whether the NFL will make the leap — and write the check,” Florio wrote.
“The ball needs to be equipped with digital components that will allow for an exact measurement as to whether a player scored a touchdown or, as it relates to Sunday night’s AFC Championship, whether a first down was gained.
“The current system is far too imperfect. And those imperfections showed tonight. Human beings using their eyes and feet to see through and around bodies in an effort to determine how far the runner carried the ball.”
Florio didn’t say the fourth-down call is why the Chiefs won, but he did call for the NFL to make a change.
Here’s the thing: That’s something Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes proposed — in 2021.
MAHOMES mentioned putting a microchip in the football in a conversation on the WHOOP podcast.
“I’ve always thought the chip in the ball has to happen sometime, where if you cross the line, it just tells you a touchdown,” Mahomes said at that time.
The same technology could be used for first downs.
“But it’s also the human error thing, it’s kind of like baseball, balls and strikes, it’s just part of the game,” Mahomes added in the podcast. “The biggest thing to me is when they get in the pile by the end zone, there is literally no way to tell if he’s in the end zone or not. It’s like you said, it’s just whatever they call. … I’m sure it’ll happen soon enough.”
If the NFL had listened to Mahomes four years ago, perhaps it could have resulted in a first down for the Bills on that play. That is, if the actually got the needed yardage.
Interestingly, after Mahomes made that comment, one of Florio’s colleagues at NBC Sports raised concerns about whether the technology would work in an NFL game.
“The problem, however, is that on most touchdown calls, the question is not just, Did the ball cross the goal line? The question is usually, Which happened first, the ball crossing the goal line or the runner’s knee touching the ground?” Michael David Smith wrote at the time. “And a chip in the ball can’t answer that question.
“Even if the NFL used an instant replay system that benefited from a microchip that told the replay official exactly when the ball crossed the goal line, that wouldn’t necessarily help the official figure out when the runner, whose knee is obscured by a pile of players, went down.”
Another rule change?
