play0:58Cam Newton reacts to Micah Parsons’ critical comments on officiating, tush pushCam Newton challenges Packers defensive end Micah Parsons’ comments on officiating in the NFL.
Rich Eisen: Tush push makes Eagles ‘unstoppable’ (1:16)Rich Eisen describes how the tush push makes the Eagles “unstoppable” after win over the Chiefs. (1:16)
Cam Newton reacts to Micah Parsons’ critical comments on officiating, tush pushCam Newton challenges Packers defensive end Micah Parsons’ comments on officiating in the NFL.
“In the replay booth, the replay official has a smaller screen with that working box in the middle of their screen,” NFL VP of replay training and development Mark Butterworth said Tuesday. “Whatever’s in the replay official’s working box, it goes to both teams and their coaches”
“What you were watching last night in your hotel rooms, that’s all you could see,” said Butterworth, from the Art McNally Gameday Central, the room at the league office in New York where every replay review happens.
“This is a fully immersive touch screen,” Butterworth said. “I can go to a bunch of different angles, hit presets, and besides the replay officials doing that, now the teams can see something non-broadcast, which is typically, hopefully, more relevant to that specific play.”
A person involved in game management for an NFL club told ESPN: “There are a couple of challenges the Hawkeye view has helped prevent me from throwing.”
“It’s a huge game-changer to get the looks instantly and not have to guess on close plays and hope for the best cause you threw it blind with the opponent going hurry-up,” said a game management coach for another NFL club.
Whenever a broadcast refers to a call coming in from “New York,” it refers to this room filled with rows of workspaces with headphones, monitors and Xbox controllers. There’s a light above each workspace, which glows green when a game kicks off and then red when a game enters the final two minutes of overtime. At the center of the room is what Butterworth calls the “captain’s perch,” where senior VP of officiating administration Perry Fewell sits to preside over his staff.
In 2023, through seven weeks of the season, the average time of review was 2:20. This year, it’s down to 1:25.
“So now we’re giving more live action, instead of having that Peter Pan pose — officials standing around and talking,” Butterworth said.
“Our standard is a very high standard of efficiency and accuracy. Our goal is to keep the review time low, accuracy rate high, and get back to actual live snaps in that three-hour game.”
Replay supervisors oversee the replay assistants, one per game, who use an Xbox controller to view the different camera angles. For a prime-time game like Monday night’s Texans at Seahawks, that meant 18 different angles from the broadcast alone.
In another change this season, the league moved the replay assistant off the road to work out of the AMGC each week. The assistants were previously at the stadiums with their assigned officiating crews.
When asked for clarity on that, Butterworth said that per the rulebook, “the decision is made in the AMGC.”
“It’s the designee of the senior vice president Perry. Ultimately, that responsibility falls to me. I may be in review right here, but there’s other supervisors and decision-makers. When there are layups, we just say, ‘hey, let’s run with it.’ When there’s an issue, when there’s anything hairy, Perry is usually sending me over, or you’re listening to it, or you see it, and go over and make sure. When it goes well, it’s, ‘great job team!’ If there’s ever an issue, that falls to me.”
Butterworth didn’t provide the specific names of the other replay decision-makers, their titles, or which games they are responsible for.
Butterworth took the job with the league office ahead of last season as part of a larger restructuring of the officiating department. He worked in NFL replay booths with officiating crews for 25 years, and has never been an on-field official. Neither has Fewell, who came to the officiating office in 2020 from a career in coaching defense.
“I’m more of an anomaly,” Butterworth said. “Most people have come up grassroots, through officiating the game on the field.”
The Tush Push play became a point of emphasis for NFL officiating crews and teams this season. The league’s officiating department included the play on the weekly training tape following Week 2, saying that officials had missed a potential false start by the Eagles when they played Kansas City, and instructing crews to call the play “tight” going forward.
Cam Newton reacts to Micah Parsons’ critical comments on officiating, tush push
Cam Newton challenges Packers defensive end Micah Parsons’ comments on officiating in the NFL.
“When the guard is in the neutral zone or someone else is in the neutral zone, it’s really hard for that line judge to identify based on what he’s looking at down the line of scrimmage,” Vincent said. “There’s a team that still does it well. And we’ve seen other people have versions of it. But from an officiating standpoint, we’re going to try to get better at identifying when someone is in the neutral zone or when someone leaves a little early.”
The Eagles were called for a false start on the tush push Sunday at Minnesota, their first penalty on the play this season. False starts or defensive offsides are not reviewable by replay assist.
Three sources in attendance at the fall league meeting told ESPN that the play was not a topic on the agenda this week.
Butterworth opened the doors of the AMGC on Tuesday to reporters in town for the fall league meeting. He said he’d left the previous night around 2 a.m. after the “Monday Night Football” doubleheader, and in an effort to de-mystify the replay process — “our only goal is to protect the shield,” he said — he toggled through multiple screens that still showed angles from Lumen Field, the site of the late Monday night game. He pointed out the new-this-year angles of the 12 boundary cameras that are installed at each NFL stadium and have helped improve the accuracy of goal-line and sideline-governed plays.
With the expansion of replay assist and replay’s role in the NFL, one question comes up frequently among those who work in game management. Who is the final decision-maker on replay? Is there one person or multiple? Teams can see the officials on the field working their game, but they don’t know which replay supervisors or vice presidents are making decisions on reviews. Rule 15 in the NFL rulebook says the “senior VP of officiating or his or her designee” is the person who can initiate a review of a play, conduct a review, change the ruling of a play or disqualify a player.
Rich Eisen: Tush push makes Eagles ‘unstoppable’ (1:16)Rich Eisen describes how the tush push makes the Eagles “unstoppable” after win over the Chiefs. (1:16)
Rich Eisen describes how the tush push makes the Eagles “unstoppable” after win over the Chiefs. (1:16)
“This is replay Nirvana in this room,” Butterworth said.
Neither of those two penalties are directly reviewable by replay.
Butterworth and each of the replay supervisors wear a wireless belt pack that allows them to speak with the replay official in the booth at each game, or the full crew of seven on-field officials. In the fifth year of replay assist, Butterworth said his staff is doing more expedited reviews, in which the referee is not consulted or shown the replay video, (total reviews are up from 117 last season to 137 through seven weeks this season) and making quick decisions on clear and obvious calls, and the average time of review has decreased nearly a full minute in the last two years.
Kalyn KahlerOct 22, 2025, 08:34 AM ETCloseKalyn Kahler is a senior NFL writer at ESPN. Kalyn reports on a range of NFL topics. She reported about the influence of coaching agents on NFL hiring and found out what current and former Cowboys players really think about the tour groups of fans that roam about The Star every day. Before joining ESPN in July of 2024, Kalyn wrote for The Athletic, Defector, Bleacher Report and Sports Illustrated. She began her career at Sports Illustrated as NFL columnist Peter King’s assistant. She is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she was a varsity cheerleader. In her free time, Kalyn takes Spanish classes and teaches Irish dance. You can reach out to Kalyn via email.Follow on X