After my long and tortuous efforts, it appears the National Football League has decided to follow my string of logic with regard to the catch rule.
A couple months ago, I wrote an article pleading the NFL to alter its standards about what constitutes a completed pass--I guess Roger Goodell took a pass through the beautiful content here at Third and Long and decided to make the right decision. A few weeks ago, Scott and I also had a heated argument about the current rule, and Scott, it looks like the league sided with me on this one.
While the minutiae and specific language haven’t yet been hammered out, the general rule changes were explained by NFL’s Senior Vice President of Officiating, Al Riveron. Riveron tweeted this out from his private Twitter account earlier today:
(via @alriveron on Twitter)
Back when I posted my article in February, I implored the NFL to remove all requirements for a catch except two feet down and control of the football. Specifically, I thought the entire “going to the ground” portion of the rule should be eliminated, and it appears the rules committee has done just that.
I also heavily criticized the ambiguity of what it meant to become a runner (part three from the above tweet). However, now that I’ve had some time to mull over the new proposal, I’ve come around to the explanation of a “football move” as it’s defined here. While the third bullet point below #3 seems pointless (when is it ever gonna be applied?), the first two clearly lay out what it takes to complete the catch. Back when Scott and I debated this issue, he worried that my proposal made it too easy to complete the catch and that fumbles would be occurring all over the place if my definition of a catch were to be adopted. I suppose Scott can take some comfort in the fact that there is a third requirement, so the league clearly saw the importance of requiring a receiver to re-join the flow of play after snaring the ball. I really don’t mind this, mostly because Riveron explains what tangibly needs to happen to become a runner. The old rule was fraught with vagueness, and it appears they’ve cleared it up for the most part (other than the third requirement).
In terms of concerns, I have two: 1) The third prong of making a “football move” leaves too much room for interpretation, and I’m honestly not sure how it will be applied. How can instant replay show what “act[s]” player is capable of performing? I’d like to see the NFL eliminate this piece and stick to tangible actions. 2) What about going to the ground on the sideline and in the endzone? I assume this issue will be cleared up when the official rules are released, but sideline/endzone catches often don’t offer an opportunity for the receiver to make a football move. The situations that Riveron points to (Dez, Jesse James, Calvin Johnson) are all plays in which a receiver caught the ball within the field of play, lunged for the goal line, and then lost control as he hit the ground. But will passes on the sideline and in the endzone during which the player doesn’t make a “football move” before losing the ball at the ground be ruled incomplete because he didn’t fulfill the third requirement for a catch? I sure hope not. Given comments from Troy Vincent, NFL Executive VP of Football Operations, about eliminating the “going to the ground” portion of the rule altogether, I’m hopeful that the NFL will make the right call on this particular issue.
Anyways, much of this article is speculation, as we don’t know what the exact rule will be. But, as Scott loves to say, baseless speculation is what we do best here at Third and Long. At the very least, this rule should diminish the complexity of the rule and hopefully make unnecessary flowcharts such as the one pictured below:
(via WaswereV2 on Reddit)
Hopefully now the referees won’t spend so much time on those damn tablets.
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