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Former NFL head of officiating Mike Pereira is skeptical about the league’s new rule against lowering the helmet to initiate contact.

Pereira said this morning on PFT Live that although NFL Network canceled his appearance this week, he visited the league office and spoke with the current head of officiating, Al Riveron, and told Riveron that the officials are given an impossible task if they’re supposed to determine which of two linemen who collide head-first at the line of scrimmage initiated the contact.

“Even though the NFL Network didn’t let me come on their show, I did visit their office and get the chance to speak with Al Riveron,” Pereira said. “I talked about how I felt it was going to be tough to officiate consistently. . . . Especially because they are pretty adamant that the rule is going to pertain to and be officiated in the tackle box, which I think is almost impossible.”

Pereira said he wishes the NFL would focus on hits using the helmet involving ball carriers, tacklers, quarterbacks and receivers, rather than down linemen.

“In open space is where the rule needed to be officiated. Not in the tackle box,” Pereira said.

However, there’s a silver lining to what Pereira is saying: He thinks calling the penalty is going to be so difficult that officials simply aren’t going to flag it very often, and instead the new rule will be enforced by fines from the league office, rather than penalties on the field.

“I still get a sense that we’re overhyping this change. We’re just not going to see the number of penalties that people are talking about,” Pereira said. “I think you’re going to see more fines than flags.”

Pereira believes the officials will call the new penalty a lot in the preseason, but that once the games count for real, they’ll leave their flags in their pockets except on the most flagrant of hits. Which means this rule change might not be quite as big a deal as people think it is.