Zach Miller play shows why NFL replay system needs further review

The NFL replay system is broke. What once seemed like a good way to objectively settle disputes is actually creating more.

Case in point: The Zach Miller no-catch ruling.

Few if any who watched the Bear tight end’s spectacular touchdown grab against the Saints on Sunday thought it wasn’t a catch — except for an NFL replay official in New York surrounded by high-def TVs.

As Miller was getting carted off the field after suffering a gruesome leg injury on the play, referee Carl Cheffers announced to the dismayed audience, including FOX announcers Justin Kutcher and Chris Spielman, that the touchdown had been overturned.

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Cheffers gave this explanation after the game: “We ruled that he was going to the ground as part of the process of the catch. So, when he goes to the ground, he has to survive the ground. He went to the ground, he temporarily lost control of the ball. The ball hit the ground; therefore it’s incomplete.”

Subsequent replays made it hard to see where exactly Miller let the ball hit the ground, but the NFL’s replay official unmistakably saw it, or seemingly had to, per the NFL rule: “A decision will be reversed only when there is clear and obvious visual evidence available that warrants the change.”

The Bears had no recourse but to accept the ruling because reviews on scoring plays, which became automatic in 2012, are not open to challenge.

Former NFL officiating chief Dean Blandino, who worked the game as a FOX analyst, was at a loss trying to discern where the replay official saw “obvious visual evidence.”

Blandino, who helped develop the NFL’s replay system, later said in a radio interview that had the Miller play been ruled incomplete on the field, he would have overruled from the booth and called it a catch.

“The whole basis of instant replay is that it … has to be obvious,” Blandino said. “Fifty guys in a bar have to agree on it. I just hope that we’re not going away from that philosophy where if the evidence is there, overturn it, by all means. But if it’s not, don’t get too technical, don’t analyze it to the nth degree. And I think that’s part of the issue right now that we’re seeing on some of these plays.”

Mike Pereira, another former officiating chief who works as a FOX analyst, said: “Why are plays being reversed when we can’t find anything … looking at the same video that they’re looking at in New York? Why in the heck are we having this discussion?”

Everyone was looking for an answer to a play that raised more questions about the NFL’s replay policy.

The league usually waits until Friday (Why Friday? Twitter users usually have these things replayed, dissected and solved within minutes.) to release its “Official Review” from that week. But recognizing the firestorm over this one, the NFL trotted out new head of officials Alberto Riveron on Wednesday to clarify. All he did was make matters worse.

Riveron showed the same video replay everyone saw on Sunday but froze it at one point and pointed to a mysterious object, which he called a football.

So, Riveron, who replaced Blandino, wants everyone to believe that the NFL’s “clear and obvious visual evidence” was a little speck of white that kinda looked like the laces to a football, jammed beneath two bodies and may or may not have had Miller’s hand between it and the ground, which also is unidentifiable.

Clearly, with their vision, these guys should have been examining the Zapruder film. The Kennedy conspiracies would have been put to rest long ago.

NFL replay reversals from the booth have jumped almost 20 percent under Riveron’s command, according to ESPN.

OK, I’m willing to concede the white speck is the football and not Miller’s towel (which, by the way, looked oversized per NFL rules) or Rafael Bush’s pants drawstrings (which, by the way, were illegally dangling from his uniform). But where in this replay does anyone see the ground? And, where in this replay is there “obvious visual evidence” that Miller’s hand isn’t between the football and the ground?

It’s clear and obvious that Miller’s hand is beneath the ball before going to the ground and after completing the play, but in those milliseconds on the turf, Riveron contends the ball somehow squirted away from his grip and touched the ground — the ground that we can’t see. Not even David Blaine could have pulled off that sleight-of-hand trick.

Again, let’s get back to the original intention of replay: To take the guesswork out of a call and get it right.

If Riveron, Blandino and Pereira — the best at what they do — can’t agree on what they saw in a SLOWED-DOWN, HIGH-DEF REPLAY, then there is no point in using replay for that type of call.

Upon further review, it’s pretty clear and obvious the NFL replay system needs fixing.

Follow me on Twitter @dancahill_cst