Jets the First to Hire Their Own Replay Official

Jets the First to Hire Their Own Replay Official
By JUDY BATTISTA

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y., Aug. 22 — The Jets were in a chaotic game against New Orleans last season when, with 9 minutes 28 seconds left in the third quarter, Coach Herman Edwards challenged a ruling that the Saints had recovered a fumble by Curtis Martin. The ruling was upheld and the Jets lost a timeout.

Five minutes later, Vinny Testaverde used a timeout to organize the offense. When Testaverde used another timeout with 8:15 left in the game, the Jets still had more than half of the fourth quarter left with no timeouts. No wonder Edwards turned to an official and begged, "Can you give a brother a break?"

The Jets have taken an innovative step to help remedy the problem. They have hired a former National Football League head linesman, Tony Veteri — who worked four Super Bowls during his 24 years on the field — to oversee their replay challenges from the press box. The Jets are the first team in the league to hire a former official for such a job.

Veteri's job sounds deceptively simple. When there is a questionable call, he will watch the replay on television monitors in the press box and advise Edwards whether he should challenge the call.

The decision is crucial. If a team challenges a call and the original ruling is upheld, the team loses a timeout. Typically, teams assign the responsibility to assistant coaches, who are already burdened with the details of the game.

Veteri, who no longer works for the league and lives in Westchester County, approached the Jets with the idea of putting him in the booth, and the Jets agreed that it made sense to employ someone who understood the challenge system.

Veteri will also alert Edwards if the opposing team is committing a foul for which it should be flagged, so that Edwards can talk to the officials on the field.

"I think I'm in a tougher spot now than prior," Veteri said. "I don't want to hurt the Jets, because I work for them. I want to do everything in my power with my eyesight and my knowledge to be positive I'm right. I have to have my eyes wide open and be on the ball that when a play happens, I've got to make a call on it."

Veteri, 78, almost certainly knows the intricacies of the rules better than anyone else on the team. He also worked as a supervisor of officials for eight years until his son, Tony, became eligible to be a referee himself. Veteri then worked for the league as an observer of officials, a job that ended after last season.

Veteri consults with his son to stay current on rules changes and directives from the league.

He has also officiated at Jets practices for 11 years, since he retired as a supervisor and Bruce Coslet, the former coach, hired him. Veteri uses practices as something of a rules seminar for players, trying to prevent a penalty before it is called. He has advised the offensive tackles, for instance, that this season the league wants them to line up at the line of scrimmage, instead of taking half-steps back when they line up for pass protection. Sure enough, Jason Fabini and Kareem McKenzie were called for an illegal formation in the preseason game against Baltimore.

Veteri also has some it's-a-small-world connections to Edwards. He officiated Super Bowl XV, which Edwards played in while a cornerback for the Philadelphia Eagles. And Veteri was working the game in which Edwards engineered the play for which he is most famous when he returned a botched handoff by Joe Pisarcik for a touchdown with 31 seconds remaining to give the Eagles a victory over the Giants.

Veteri does not think of his new job as second-guessing his former colleagues. Last season, in 248 N.F.L. games, 258 plays were reviewed, with 191 challenges by coaches (the other plays were automatically reviewed because they occurred within the final two minutes of a half). Of the plays that were reviewed, the call was reversed 89 times.

Last year, Edwards challenged four calls and a fifth play was automatically reviewed. Edwards was 2-2 in plays he challenged, and the Jets won that decision.

Veteri got some early practice for the job last January when, like almost everyone else who saw the play, he tried to decipher one of the most controversial calls of recent years: the no fumble by New England quarterback Tom Brady in a playoff game against Oakland.

"That was a good call," Veteri said. "By rules it wasn't a fumble. It had all the indications, but not the rule."

Now the Jets have their own indicator of the rules. EXTRA POINTS