SmashMouth

The Lions will argue at next week’s league meetings that instant replay should be available to review penalties. But they don’t think they’re going to win that battle.

Among several rules proposals involving changes to instant replay, the Lions’ proposal is one of the simplest: It merely adds “All fouls identified by a game official” to the list of situations that can be reviewed on instant replay. That seems simple and doable, but Lions General Manager Martin Mayhew told Josh Katzenstein of the Detroit News that he thinks he has the support of only about 40 percent of the league, not the 75 percent that is needed to pass a rules change.

Still, Mayhew is looking forward to stating his case before the league.

“I think what’s going to happen is there will be more dialogue about ways to improve it,” Mayhew said. “I think that really it may even initiate with the competition committee about how they want to revamp it. Obviously, those guys have their finger on the pulse of what needs to change and what could be more efficient.”

The Lions took an interest in reviewing penalties when a non-call on the Cowboys became the turning point in Detroit’s playoff loss in Dallas. However, the Lions’ proposal actually wouldn’t have done anything to fix that call: Detroit is proposing only that penalties called on the field become reviewable. The problem in that case was that a penalty that should have been called on the Cowboys wasn’t.

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