INDIANAPOLIS — NFL officials drew strong criticism and came under scrutiny at various points during the 2024 season because of apparent struggles with accurate ball placement during key junctures of games, as well as rules enforcement on various plays like roughing the passer and late hits out of bounds.

Help is on the way for the 2025 season, however. The NFL, in the coming season, will add six tracking cameras to every stadium to help with expedited line to gain measurements, and another 12 fixed cameras along sidelines, end lines and goal lines to bolster the amount of angles that replay officials will have available to them to ensure correct calls and placements are made during games.

When the members of the NFL’s competition committee meet next month in advance of the annual league meetings, they will consider expanding the number of plays that replay assist will cover as a form of backup for officiating crews, according to Troy Vincent, NFL executive vice president of football operations.

Vincent and members of his football operations staff explained Wednesday during a briefing with members of the media that under current replay assist rules, roughing the passer calls (on hits that draw contact with quarterbacks’ heads and neck areas), unnecessary roughness on hits against runners out of bounds, intentional grounding and ineligible men downfield all can be corrected upon real-time booth reviews. Replay assist can eliminate a penalty in the case where officials incorrectly flew a flag. However, the system currently cannot assess a penalty where officials missed a call.

Vincent explained that committee members will consider expanding replay assist to include roughing the passer calls involving hits below the knee, unnecessary roughness calls on hits against defenseless receivers, facemask calls on any instance where a hand comes in contact with a facemask; tripping, illegal crackback blocks and horse-collar tackles.

The members of the NFL’s competition committee met during a three-day span this week in Indianapolis and received input from NFL coaches as well as players that comprise the NFL Players Association’s leadership team. Discussions also took place regarding the controversial “tush push” quarterback sneak play made popular by the Philadelphia Eagles, and additional modifications to the “dynamic kickoff” as NFL officials continue to work to improve the quality of the game on multiple fronts. Changes also could be coming to the overtime format.

No rule changes would be finalized until the league meetings in late March, but competition committee members will continue to refine potential proposals for NFL owners to vote on at those meetings. The technological advances, however, will take place without need of team votes, Vincent and members the football operations staff revealed.

The NFL began experimenting with digital measurement of lines to gain during last preseason; however, more testing and modifications to the system were required before league officials felt comfortable relying primarily on that technology. But the addition of the 18 new cameras in every stadium will make such a change possible.

The NFL will test and further refine this technology during the UFL games that take place at Detroit’s Ford Field this spring. The Michigan Panthers and Detroit Lions are the only UFL and NFL teams that share a stadium, so that’s why the testing will take place there.

The league will also test out the implementation of another 14 incremental cameras for the use of the SkeleTRACK system that is designed to assist with ball and player tracking, which would support officials. But it remains unknown if that system will be ready for use in the coming season.

For now, though, the NFL will indeed rely on the Hawk-Eye virtual measurement for line to gain for first-down measurements. The chain gangs will remain a part of the game as a backup system. Initial ball placement will remain in the hand of referees, however, once the ball is spotted, replay assist will confirm the accuracy of placement.

Meanwhile, although encouraged by the increase in the relevancy of the kickoff play following last season’s modifications to its formation, NFL officials believe additional tweaks will make the kickoff an even bigger factor in games.

It’s expected that competition committee members will recommend placing the ball at the 35-yard line rather than the 30 to encourage teams to kick the ball into the field of play rather than booming the ball out of the back of the end zone. The NFL also could have kickers kick from their own 30-yard line rather than the 35. The UFL will make such a change this offseason, and competition committee members as well as advisors and special teams coaches Richard Hightower (Chicago), Darren Rizzi (Denver) and John Fassel (Tennessee) will closely study the results of that change before determining if the NFL should also implement that modification.

On the overtime front, the NFL currently uses a system in which rules differ between regular season and postseason play. In the regular season, teams play a 10-minute period and a team can win the game by receiving the opening kick and marching downfield and scoring a touchdown. If a team has to settle for a field goal, the other team also would have a chance to possess the ball. But a touchdown scored on the opening drive of regular season overtimes robs the kicking team of the chance to possess the ball, which has represented a source of strong frustration for NFL coaches and players.

In the postseason, overtime lasts 15 minutes and both teams must possess the ball once regardless of whether a touchdown is scored on the opening kick of the period.

NFL coaches want the league to adopt the postseason format in the regular season, with the only difference from a playoff game being if the score remains tied at the end of 15 minutes, that game would end in a tie.

As in the case of the other rule changes, any modifications to overtime is subject to vote at the league meetings, and 24 of the 32 teams would have to vote in favor of a proposal.

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(Photo by Sam Hodde / Getty Images)