Giants Owner John Mara Says Only One Of Patriots’ Three Proposals Could Pass

With the annual NFL meetings coming up today, Giants owner John Mara talked about the future of the three Patriots proposals, and it was a mixed bag of feelings.

From Jeff Howe of the Boston Herald, here are his thoughts on the three.

On extending the PAT attempts:

"“We’ve had a lot of discussions about that. I think that one has a chance. I don’t know if it’s going to get 24 votes, but I happen to be in favor of that one and think it’s a good proposal because we have a play right now that is a ceremonial play, and why not make it competitive?”"

On broadening the use of the coaches challenge:

"“I think it probably does not have enough support to pass. One of the problems is you need 24 votes to make any change, and I just don’t see that happening. I think as a committee, the competition committee, we were 9-0 against that just because it adds too many challenges to the game. If you look at the statistics, I think it’s less than one challenge per game. There’s no question in my mind if we went that route, we’d have four challenges a game, maybe more if you’re successful on two of them. Just because any time there’s a big play, you’re going to want to throw the challenge flag. I just don’t think we’re ready to go there yet.”"

On placing cameras on all the boundary lines on the field:

"“I’m not optimistic that one gets passed because every stadium is configured differently. To construct camera locations and whatnot, I just don’t know if there’s a need to do that.”"

I personally think the challenge idea, and the camera idea are great, and should be passed. With how big pass interference calls have become (or defensive holding), allowing coaches to challenge big calls would make the game less controversial, and potentially take some of the pressure off the officials.

As for the extra cameras, I honestly don’t understand why the NFL couldn’t get enough support for this. Why wouldn’t you want to add this? It helps the game, it doesn’t give any unfair advantages, and like the broader challenge rules, it could help eliminate controversy, and bad calls from the officials from the game.

Lastly, I am not a fan of the PAT change. When you score a touchdown, it’s a given you will get seven points. If it is moved back 15 yards, it is no longer a given, and I think that would present a lot of dumb problems for the rest of the NFL. I’m not so worried about the Pats, because we have a terrific kicker in Stephen Gostkowski, but for other teams that aren’t as well off, they could get screwed because of a rule change.