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New NFL rules including P.I. replay

PHOENIX (AP) — NFL owners voted down a proposal to replace the onside kick with one play from scrimmage, and tabled a suggestion to require each team to have one possession in overtime regardless of what happened on the first series of the extra period.

Owners will next take up the overtime topic again at their May meeting.

Team owners are tweaking Pass interference. Whether flagged or not, pass interference can be challenged by coaches and reviewed by officials next season.

NFL team owners voted Tuesday on a one-year trial basis to include those often-controversial penalties in the officiating replay review system. Coaches still will have two challenges per game, and in the final two minutes of a half or fourth quarter or for all of overtime, the replay official can order a review of offensive or defensive pass interference.

The major change — owners traditionally have been highly reluctant to include any penalties in the replay process — stems from an egregious missed call in the NFC championship game that likely led to the Rams making the Super Bowl and the Saints falling short.

The NFL has also awarded nearly a quarter-million dollars to two companies seeking to enhance protection provided by helmets. Windpact, founded by former NFL cornerback Shawn Springs, is receiving $148,820 to tailor its padding technology, called Crash Cloud, for use in Schutt’s helmets. Auxadyne was awarded $86,688 to advance its XPF material, an energy absorber that becomes more dense upon impact. The company will use this unique material, the only commercially available of its kind, to create a football helmet padding system that can reduce the impact to an athlete’s head.

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