Matt Patricia using preseason to develop “philosophy” for challenging PI calls

[Roary]

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The preseason begins on Thursday night when the Broncos and Falcons square off in the Hall of Fame Game and that means we may be a few hours away from seeing the first replay review involving pass interference.

Allowing reviews of pass interference calls and non-calls is the biggest rule change of the year in the NFL and there’s been no shortage of commentary about the impact it will have on games. Some of those comments have come from the league’s head coaches as they’ll be able to throw a challenge flag to trigger such reviews.

That’s going to take some getting used to and Lions head coach Matt Patricia said on Thursday that he’ll be using the preseason to both devise the best strategies for when to use that option as well as watching to see how other coaches will wield their flags.

“I think it’ll be really interesting throughout the course of the preseason to watch coaches, and to really try to push the different strategies with that, and to see what happens,” Patricia said, via MLive.com. “I think the challenge part of it is interesting. I think it’ll be more interesting depending on how critical the play is. Do you use it? Do you save it? Is there another part of the game? I think you try to look at it as much as you can in the preseason and hopefully try to develop your philosophy as you go. You go into the season with an idea of how you want to do it, and then maybe push it to the limits as much as you can when you have the opportunity, and then re-evaluate it.”

Saints head coach Sean Payton said he thinks coaches will be more judicious with their challenges in order to be sure to have them on hand for the clear and obvious errors that replay is meant to set right. We may start getting an idea about whether he’s right on Thursday night.