Sir Purrcival wrote:Well it seemed much longer than that. There were at least 2 challenges that didn't prevail. One resulted in a penalty against the bombers for trying to make a challenge that wasn't permissible. One for for a defensive pass interference non call. Lets also take into account that often as we saw last night, the challenge flag doesn't come out until we are well into the 20 second clock which often starts about 30 seconds after the previous play. In some instances, it can be up to a minute after the play before we see the challenge flag. It just feels like you keep getting held up while you wait to see if the previous play is going to stand. Let's also not forget the TD reviews. We can often wait a minute or so while HQ reviews a play that seems pretty bloody obvious to the rest. Do you have stats on how longs games took before the institution of replay? I hate to say it, but I am almost starting to lean to the other side of just letting the officials make the calls and they really do need to improve their consistency on what is a penalty and what isn't. Even the commentators don't seem to know much of the time as in one game, something is called, then next, it goes unpenalized. Same for the challenge. One week a play will be overturned on challenge, the next week, it seems like a similar play will be allowed to stand.
The use of video review began in 2006 and has been expanded in recent years to allow coaches' challenges in more situations, such as offensive and defensive pass interference and roughing the quarterback, but the number of challenges allowed per game (two per team, or three if the first two are upheld) has not been increased. Last year the league averaged 1.65 challenges per game so teams have been using less than half of their allotted challenges.
As you noted, coaches' challenges do not include plays that are automatically reviewed by the league, including touchdowns, turnovers and now field goals. I don't know how much time those reviews add to a game but the average length of games has not changed significantly in the past five years:
AVERAGE LENGTH OF GAMES (hours:minutes, not including overtime):
2011: 2:53
2012: 2:53
2013: 2:55
2014: 2:55
2015: 2:52
2016: 2:55 (through three weeks)