Bill Belichick is never going to give up his quest for more replay cameras on the sidelines.
The New England Patriots head coach has been trying to get the NFL to use more cameras on the field boundaries for years, but the league keeps rejecting him and saying it would be too expensive. But Belichick brought up the issue again in a conference call Monday while discussing a James White catch that was overturned.
The running back seemed to have made an incredible catch for 20 yards on a third-and-3, but the referees ruled he was out of bounds after a Texans challenge. However, it was hard to tell if White’s heel really touched the chalk.
“I think in particular the White play it goes back to the whole issue of the angle of the camera and was his heel actually on the white or was his toe on the ground and his heel above the white, how close it was,” Belichick said. “And I think I just would say what I’ve said many times before that I think because of the plays on the sideline, on the goal line and on the end line that the league ought to have cameras there”
And Belichick doesn’t think money should be an issue in the case of accuracy.
“If we need to raise money, we should raise money and get those set so that on those kinds of plays, we have an absolute down-the-line angle of the play and not, I would say, the angles that I saw shown up on the screen, which none of them were down the line,” Belichick said. “They were all coming from either behind or from the field or from kind of the sideline.
“… There is some that we can all look at and say, ‘Yeah, it’s this,’ or ‘Yeah, it’s that,’ but those ones that are just kind of a really close call and a toss-up, it’s one thing when it’s very close, it’s another thing when you don’t have a really good angle to see it and then therefore you can’t make a good decision.”
The NFL is testing the idea at MetLife Stadium and will evaluate the extra camera angles at the end of the season.
Thumbnail photo via Kevin Jairaj/USA TODAY Sports Images
