PHOENIX

St. Louis Rams head coach Jeff Fisher on Monday mischaracterized both the status of the CFL’s defensive pass-interference video reviews, and the number of successful overturns.

Fisher, the de facto co-chairman of the NFL’s competition committee, told a news conference at the NFL’s annual meeting that only 49 of 55 reviews last season in the CFL were initiated by coaches, that only six were overturned (11%), and that it was just a one-year experiment.

Not so.

In a phone interview Tuesday morning the CFL’s vice-president of officiating, Glen Johnson, said 17 of 55 reviews were overturned (31%). That’s what QMI Agency colleague Kirk Penton reported months ago.

It broke down like this, Johnson said.

All 55 were coaches’ challenges. Forty-nine were to appeal for a flag when one was not thrown, and 15 of those non-calls were overturned into DPI calls. The other six challenges disputed the called DPI, and after review two of those flags were picked up.

Johnson furthermore said the CFL’s new rule last year expanding replay to include DPI calls and non-calls “wasn’t experimental in nature. We passed it as a firm rule.

“What I think Jeff meant -- not to put words in his mouth -- but it was just the first time that we did this ... But our rules committee did not pass it as a one-year trial. They’d have to vote it out now.”

Johnson said the CFL rules committee meets Thursday to nail down this year’s rules, and there is no proposal to repeal the DPI replay rule. It’s staying.

It’s even possible the rule might even be expanded in 2015 to include offensive pass-interference calls and non-calls as well, Johnson said.

“It’s a possibility, yes.”

Johnson said coaches and teams were happy with the first-year result.

“We declared it a modest success. When you’re inventing something new there are always bumps in the road along the way. One of the things we struggled a bit with was getting to a consistent standard.

“You did one, so you had a standard. You did two, so now you’ve got two standards. Ultimately it took some time to get to a spot where it was becoming more predictable for coaches what our decision would be. It took some time to get there, but we’re in a good spot.”

CFL reviews are decided at the league’s centralized video-replay centre in Toronto, much like the NHL’s.

In the NFL, reviews ultimately are decided by the on-field referee, with help from the league’s centralized video operation in New York City. So in that regard, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison.

“We working pretty closely with those guys (in the NFL),” Johnson said. “We’ve been sharing our data. I’ve spent a fair bit of time with (NFL VP of officiating) Dean Blandino, talking about this and just being completely cooperative and transparent with our data.”

NINE-POINTER RULED OUT

So much for those nine-point touchdowns.

Not that anyone thought it had a chance in hell of being adopted, but the NFL announced that most of this year’s rule-change proposals were withdrawn or shot down.

The five approved were safety-related, as the league continues to bend over backward to try to make the game less dangerous.

Probably the most significant of the amendments empowers a spotter in the press box to stop a game if he sees “obvious signs” in a player “of disorientation, or is clearly unstable.”

Call it the Julian Edelman rule. He’s the New England Patriots receiver whose bell got wickedly rung by a Seattle Seahawks tackler, and who remained in the game despite appearing at least a little bit woozy.

All but one of 13 rules proposals aiming to expand the purview of video replay failed to be approved. The one that was is minor: referees can now review the game clock on the final play of a half or overtime. Meaning, if someone stops the clock too soon, or lets it run too long, replay officials can now correct it.

LURIE ON CHIP

Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeff Lurie talked to a huge circle of reporters for around half an hour Tuesday, trying in vain to convince everyone that his head coach, Chip Kelly, wasn’t the one who pushed GM Howie Roseman effectively out of his job. In January, Lurie gave Kelly final say on his football roster. And as everyone knows, Kelly hasn’t been exactly hesitant about blowing up the roster that Roseman built. “That may have been the interpretation,” Lurie said. “But I don’t think any of us really see it that way.”