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The Cowboys barely won on Thursday night, the Saints barely lost. The officials, led by referee Walt Anderson, suffered a blowout.

Various bad calls undermined a great game, with the most consequential blunder coming when Saints running back Alvin Kamara sustained the kind of hit that the new rule against lowering the helmet (as unofficially revised but not officially revised) was specifically aimed at eliminating from the sport. But no flag was thrown.

There’s a good chance the call would have been missed even if the rule hadn’t been unofficially relaxed. Officials are still adjusting to a widening of the focus, watching one player approaching another and adopting the prohibited linear posture before making impact. Last night, Smith rocketed toward Kamara, and the seven officials who are primarily trying to avoid being trampled by young men in armor didn’t see it coming.

That’s why the NFL needs to eventually embrace the use of an eighth member of the officiating crew. But that person wouldn’t be put on the field. Official No. 8 would sit at a bank of monitors, seeing every possible camera angle. Official No. 8 would be in constant contact with the referee or some other member of the on-field crew. Official No. 8 would serve as an extra set of eyes from the perspective of a viewer, bridging the gap between what the officials see from within the field and what the rest of us see from within our homes.

It wouldn’t be part of the replay process, because it wouldn’t be replay review, per se. It would be an embrace of the primary manner in which pro football is consumed, and it would provide real-time assistance to the officiating crew from place of no physical peril.

Eventually, it will happen. A blown call that affects a game and/or the application of the betting line will, as legal wagering spreads, force the league to make what should be an easy and obvious change. As hard-earned dollars legitimately ride on whether or not officials get it right, the league will face relentless pressure to get it right, all the time.

For decades, the supposed purity of sport has embraced the impurity of human error. When the final score of sporting events begin to have the same relevance to American society as the rising and falling of stock prices, the challenge for sports leagues will be to take all steps necessary to eradicate human error from its games.

Having a real-time video official who has the same standing as an official who is standing on the field would assist in that objective, while creating relatively minimal delays. And if the NFL doesn’t make this change on its own, some governmental body eventually will demand it.