Both brands of football need to let the referees officiate and limit use of video replay

The global spectacle known as the World Cup wraps up Sunday at the Meadowlands. As we have observed over the last five weeks, there aren’t too many similarities between soccer and American football.

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One sport has continuous action, the other stops every 10 seconds. One sport penalizes you for using your hands (unless you’re a designated goalkeeper), the other penalizes you for kicking the ball (unless you’re a designated kicker). One sport awards fouls for incidental contact, the other embraces contact as the essence of the game.

Yet there is one area in which the NFL can take lessons from the World Cup — FIFA’s use of instant replay, or video assistant referee. FIFA began using VAR for the 2018 tournament, and ramped up its efforts significantly this summer, with well over 100 calls overturned by VAR throughout the tournament.

While VAR was helpful in some instances, FIFA essentially provided the NFL (and other leagues) a guide on how not to use instant replay.

The standard for using VAR was to fix “clear and obvious errors” or “serious missed incident” by the officials, but FIFA turned it into a mess. Several replay decisions, like a red card for USA’s Folarin Balogun or a disallowed goal by Germany in its loss to Paraguay, took several minutes to determine and were hardly “clear and obvious.”

“The mantra for VAR was always minimum interference but maximum benefit,” Mark Geiger, the first American referee to work a World Cup knockout game, told the LA Times. “The whole genesis of VAR was not to fix every mistake or to make the referees perfect. They should be asking themselves, ‘Is the referee clearly and obviously wrong?’ ”

The lessons the NFL should take from FIFA’s use of instant replay:

No. 1: Don’t take forever. Want to use instant replay to determine if a player’s pinkie finger was offside? Fine, just make the call quickly.

Instead, FIFA’s VAR process was often painfully slow, making Kylian Mbappé wait about five minutes to take his penalty kick against Morocco, for example, and taking approximately seven minutes to determine that Senegal had committed a late foul in the box against Belgium.

NFL instant replay has gotten quicker with better technology and the introduction of “replay assist” in the past few years, but no decision should take more than, say, 20-30 seconds. If it takes longer than that to figure out, then it’s not “clear and obvious.”

No. 2: Limit the number of replays. Worse than the length of some reviews was the fact that there was no limit on the number of them sent to VAR, often killing the flow of the match.

FIFA badly needs to institute a system of challenges and put the onus on the managers, similar to the NFL. Three challenges per team is more than enough.

Unfortunately, the NFL has been moving away from the challenge system, increasing the use of “replay assist” and the number of plays that are automatically reviewed. This lets coaches off the hook, and slows the game down. The less instant replay, the better.

Rule No. 3: Don’t use super-duper slow motion. The game is played and officiated in real time, and is not meant to be examined and litigated frame by frame, millisecond by millisecond.

It was absurd to see Croatia lose a tying goal in stoppage time because the chip in the ball detected a tiny brushing of a player’s hair as it skidded by. It was equally ludicrous to see Balogun get a red card against Bosnia after the official determined in real time that the play was fair. Same with England defender Jarell Quansah getting a red card against Mexico via VAR.

“Look under anything with a microscope, you could probably find something,” US defender Chris Richards said.

This offseason, the NFL approved the use of replay assist to issue penalties for player safety that the officials missed — hits to the head, roughing the passer, and more — and it’s going to be a mess if they use slow-motion.

Rule No. 4: Don’t use a sky judge to call penalties that the on-field referees didn’t call. One of the defining characteristics of this World Cup has been the number of controversial fouls called by the VAR that the on-field officials didn’t see — Balogun, Quansah, Senegal’s foul, and more.

FIFA instituted VAR specifically as a backstop for the officials, but the NFL doesn’t need to go there. The league has long deferred to the on-field officials and been hesitant to the concept of a sky judge who can throw penalties that the officials miss. And in 2019 when the NFL allowed for pass interference calls to be challenged, it was such a mess than the league scrapped it after one year.

Yet the NFL is creeping closer to a sky judge with “replay assist” and the ability to throw flags for player safety calls. Let the on-field officials do their job.

Rule No. 5: Don’t go back and re-litigate plays that happened several moments earlier.

Egypt was furious when it had a goal wiped off the board because VAR determined it had fouled Argentina about 10 seconds and 100 yards earlier. The NHL does this, too, and it drives me nuts. If the officials didn’t call the foul on the field, then it wasn’t “clear and obvious,” and the result of the play needs to stand.

Instant replay purports to solve all problems, but often just creates more controversy. We need to accept that the games are played and officiated by humans moving at fast speeds and it’s OK to live with a few missed or borderline calls.

Netflix released last week the third season of its docuseries “Quarterback,” a run of seven episodes that takes us inside the 2025 seasons of four quarterbacks — the Buccaneers’ Baker Mayfield, Commanders’ Jayden Daniels, Titans’ Cam Ward, and Browns’/Bengals’ Joe Flacco.

It’s an interesting roster, because all four players struggled last year.

Mayfield battled injuries and saw his numbers dip as the Buccaneers went 8-9 and missed the playoffs for the first time in six years. Daniels started just seven games due to knee, hamstring, and elbow injuries as the Commanders finished 5-12. Ward finished near the bottom of the NFL in passer rating and completion percentage as the Titans went 3-14 and fired their coaches. And Flacco went 2-8 as a starter across two teams, first losing his job in Cleveland then unable to keep Cincinnati’s playoff hopes alive after being acquired in a trade.

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“Quarterback” is co-produced by Peyton Manning, Patrick Mahomes, and NFL Films, and is not a documentary in the traditional sense. It is going to portray the players and teams in a positive light and mostly stay away from the dysfunction and drama behind the scenes.

But the series does highlight the flaw in the NFL’s injury reporting system. “Quarterback” shows Mayfield suffering a sprained MCL and PCL in Week 2 against the Texans, an injury that hampered him throughout the season. But Mayfield wasn’t on the Week 3 injury report for a knee injury (instead, he was listed as “foot/toe”), and “knee” didn’t show up for him until Week 5.

The Buccaneers may have been playing by the rules. Teams are only required to list players on the injury report if their reps are curtailed in practice, and Mayfield may have been “full participation” despite his injury. But he was clearly hampered by his knee injuries, and anyone who knew the extent of his pain had pretty good inside information.

The first episode also had a noteworthy scene between Ward and former Titans QB coach Bo Hardegree, who previously worked with Josh McDaniels for three seasons (2021 in New England and 2022-23 in Las Vegas). Ward took a late sack to cement a loss, and Hardegree reminded Ward on the bench that it’s OK to take check-down throws. To teach that point, Hardegree showed Ward a video reel of a certain ex-Patriots quarterback.

“You just got to listen to me on it — take the easy ones,” Hardegree says on the sideline. “It’s OK throwing unders and slants and working through progressions to get the ball out. That’s why I showed you that Tom Brady video. You’ll do it, and when you do it you’ll be like, ‘[Expletive], this is easy.’ ”

Stefon Diggs has been out of work since the Patriots released the wide receiver in March, and though he reportedly has been in contact with five teams, Diggs sounds anxious that he remains unsigned with training camps opening next week.

“My opinion, I can compete with anybody,” Diggs said last week on his YouTube channel. “You can’t name a No. 2 better than me.”

Maybe Tee Higgins or Davante Adams, but Diggs proved he still has plenty of good football left last year after catching 85 passes for 1,013 yards. He should be a nice addition for potentially the Commanders or Ravens, his two hometown teams.

But although he was found not guilty in May of assault and strangulation in Norfolk County District Court, off-field issues might still be preventing Diggs, 32, from getting signed.

Per TMZ, Diggs is being sued by his former concierge and consultant, Nigel King, who claims Diggs falsely accused him of stealing his Ferrari and sent friends to attack King. Diggs is also embroiled in a lawsuit with a man named Christopher Griffith — Diggs sued him for false allegations that he drugged and sexually assaulted Griffith, and Griffith countersued, claiming Diggs sexually assaulted him at his home in 2023.

Diggs has avoided discipline from the NFL despite being at the center of a handful of lawsuits and legal issues. But the incidents are starting to pile up, and might be affecting Diggs’s free agency.

Of the 257 draft picks this year, only six remain unsigned as training camps nears. Four of them are the quarterbacks drafted in the top three rounds — Fernando Mendoza, Ty Simpson, Carson Beck, and Drew Allar. While their rookie compensation is determined by their draft slot, the QBs are likely negotiating over guarantees and payment structure — getting higher guarantees than their draft slot would normally produce due to the unofficial “quarterback premium,” and getting guaranteed roster bonuses each year instead of having all their money tied into base salary.

The fifth unsigned player is Raiders fourth-round cornerback Jermod McCoy, who fell in the draft because of a knee injury. McCoy and the Raiders are likely squabbling over guarantees and injury protection.

The last unsigned player is Patriots second-round edge defender Gabe Jacas, who had a surgical procedure sometime after he was drafted, which according to ESPN was a clean-up on his knee. Jacas hasn’t been on the field yet with the Patriots, hasn’t worked with the coaches in the classroom, and seems to be in a weird spot with his team.

Patriots coach Mike Vrabel said in June he wasn’t frustrated by Jacas’s surgery and lack of involvement so far, but when asked directly if the team knew when it drafted Jacas that he would need surgery, Vrabel talked around it: “Again, he just had to have a procedure, and he is not under contract.”

The Patriots not only expect Jacas to fill a significant need on defense, they traded up to draft him 55th. Yet he missed his entire rookie offseason, and when rookies report to training camp on Tuesday, Jacas may not be there. The longer he remains unsigned, the bigger the story gets.

The Chiefs’ season opener Sept. 14 against the Broncos at home on Monday Night Football will mark nine months to the day that Mahomes tore the ACL and LCL in his left knee.

Mahomes won’t be 100 percent his old self at that point, and the Chiefs almost certainly will have a role for backup quarterback Justin Fields, particularly in short-yardage spots. But barring a significant setback in his recovery, Mahomes seems like a lock for Week 1.

“I don’t want to miss that game because that’s the team that won the division while we were gone, and you want to be out there and ready to go with your teammates,” Mahomes told Yahoo Sports. “I’ll give every single thing I can to be out there Week 1, and hopefully the doctors and the coaches give me the green light, and I’m able to go out there with my guys and compete against one of the best teams in the league.”

Mahomes has been training by himself the last five or so months, and is raring to get back with his teammates. The Chiefs may have to protect him from himself at training camp.

“I’ve kind of been in the building in Kansas City by myself,” he said. “Just [to] have the guys back and getting to be on the football field will get me going and get me ready for the season.”

Broncos coach Sean Payton, a member of the competition committee, thinks the NFL will adopt in the next few years more transparency with its instant replay process, potentially televising the conversations between the referee and replay official in real time. “I think it’s healthy, and it’s certainly comforting for the fan when you can see how they arrive at decisions,” he told SportsBoom.com. “And I think it’s fair, especially to the officials and the people doing the review, to see what we arrived at.” … Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald tried to clean up the mess by denying that Brady was the person with a “conflict of interest” who gave him tips for the Super Bowl. But who else would it be? Brady has intimate knowledge of McDaniels’s offensive system, and had a vested interest in seeing offensive coordinator Klay Kubiak win a Super Bowl, as Brady was about to hire him as the Raiders’ head coach … Jon Gruden was reinstated to the Buccaneers’ Ring of Honor in 2025 after being taken down four years prior. Now this August, he’s reportedly going to broadcast one or more of Tampa Bay’s preseason games. It seems likely that Gruden will soon be back in the NFL one way or another, as a coach or broadcaster … Roger Goodell told Sportico that he has Japan in mind for an NFL regular-season game. The NFL’s Week 1 game in Melbourne, Australia, this year is likely the test run to see if Asian markets can work, timing wise … The natural grass at the 11 NFL stadiums seemed to hold up quite well throughout the World Cup, particularly in the indoor venues of Dallas, Atlanta, and Houston … France had more wins at Gillette Stadium this World Cup (two) than the Jets have had since 2011 (1-14). The Jets’ lone win came at the end of the 2023 season in Bill Belichick’s final game.

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