We've been here before. Many times. And to be perfectly honest, and understanding that I'm going to be a complete buzzkill, there really isn't much that can be done to fix it right now.
You saw it Monday night. A running back with an $8.5 million salary took a handoff from a quarterback who makes $21 million. He is tackled near the first-down marker by a linebacker earning $3 million, a play watched by millions of people on a broadcast for which the rights-holder is paying nearly $2 billion annually.
The NFL is a $13 billion industry, one of the most lucrative in the world. And yet when it came down to marking the ball for a potential first down, referee Tony Corrente and crew followed what seems to us all a primitive ritual. Using their best judgment, they placed the ball on the ground below where they thought it was suspended when the running back was down by contact.
Then they used a 10-yard link of chains to determine whether Houston Texans running back Lamar Miller had reached the line to gain. The measurement showed he had not, despite what appeared on the ESPN broadcast to be a successful run.
The same thing happened again on fourth down; Texans running back Akeem Hunt was ruled down just short. The spot was upheld on replay, a key fourth-quarter swing in what became a 27-20 loss to the Oakland Raiders.
Social media, and the Texans to a lesser extent, exploded. Why is the NFL still using such an inexact method to measure ball placement? How, in an age of driverless cars and diaper delivery by drone, can there not be a way to use technology to pinpoint a more precise and consistent spot?
I've been reporting on this issue for several years and, as reasonable as those questions sound, I've found no satisfying answers. The best solution might be to experiment with a Canadian Football League innovation that uses a centralized video official to assist with spots and other administrative matters. But even then, the NFL would be limited by what can be seen on the broadcast.
To this point, the NFL has been limited by technology that is deemed unreliable when buried among humans.
Last year, I spoke with a representative of a company that produces the Hawk-Eye data chip used to assist referees in soccer's Premier League. Developers said that the chip would not work unless a minimum of 25 percent of the ball is exposed to daylight. If a running back has the ball tucked correctly, and/or he is at the bottom of a pile, the chip cannot transmit its location consistently enough for confident use.
New hope emerged this summer when the NFL placed RFID chips in footballs it would use in the preseason and also Thursday night games. But even if they prove reliable enough to merit further testing, they would only provide half of the information needed to spot the ball.
The RFID chip could tell us where the ball is at any given point in time, but we wouldn't necessarily know where it was when the player was down. To do that, as one source described to me, the NFL would have to put chips in each player's knee and elbow pads -- at least -- to be able to coordinate locations.
That's not impossible, of course. But it's also not as easy as throwing a chip into a free-moving soccer ball.
You might ask: How can this be so hard? Tennis, after all, has been using electronic line judges forever. But Monday night in Mexico City, we never saw a definitive camera angle that could confirm whether Texans receiver DeAndre Hopkins stepped out of bounds en route to what could have been a first-quarter touchdown.
New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick has advocated that the NFL install and standardize camera angles for the sidelines and goal lines in every stadium. If nothing else, that would give replay review officials an optimal chance to verify or reverse a ruling.
I found two answers when I investigated that possibility last year. First, the layout of the NFL's 31 stadiums made it difficult to install a consistent angle. A perfect spot in one stadium might be partially blocked in another, creating the untenable possibility of replay adding to home-field advantage for some teams.
Second, the cost was significant -- estimated at $25 million or more -- for a project that might have only incremental impact. (Belichick has suggested a bake sale to take care of it, which might have been one of his best public moments to date.)
In the CFL, a trained official sits at league headquarters for every game with a live audio connection to the referee. He has the authority to advise on the spot of the ball based on what he sees on the monitor in front of him. It is not a perfect solution, and in fact is designed only to avoid the most obvious mistakes, but it is a layer the NFL should consider adding for occasions such as Monday night.
These are surely not the answers you're looking for, whether you're a frustrated Texans fan or simply someone who would like to limit blood-pressure spikes during games. It is easy to bash the NFL when an official appears to make a mistake, even while overlooking errors that occur regularly in all aspects of what is a game played and coached by humans. And in many cases, the league deserves the criticism.
But if you want to see officiating administered differently and the spotting of balls made more reliable, it's important to know what the realistic options are. At the moment, there aren't as many as you think.