I’m pretty sure that before the 2000 season this would have also been ruled incomplete. Ask Bert Emanuel.
Your intuition is that catching has something to do with your feet? Weird.
My intuition is that catching should be about catching and, you know, not dropping the ball.
Are you serious? The main question when someone catches something near the sideline is “where were his feet?” When people ask “did he make a football move?” do you think that has something to do with his shoulders?
How long does he need to hold onto the ball before he’s “caught” it?
I’m glad you asked that. Fortunately, the NFL has put some thought into this and has come up with a very detailed answer that leaves absolutely no gray areas.
A receiver must maintain possession until he starts running or makes some other football move (e.g. a lunge for the first down marker) or in the event that he is falling to the ground as he gains possession he must maintain control of the ball until he lands on the ground. I’m a little surprised that this thread has gone this long without this coming up.
Yes, it was. You are stating a clearly wrong idea, that has already been debunked multiple times. As a reminder, the clearly wrong idea you’re promoting is that this exact same pass would be ruled differently in the middle of the field. It would not. This same rule is applied in the same way to all passes (and interceptions) regardless of field position. This has been explained in this thread multiple times, so your continuing promotion of this wrong idea is baffling to me. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I can only conclude you’re lying.
This would make the Shockey catch a completion, which was even more blatantly anti-common sense than the Megatron play.
You also never addressed my hypothetical. Back to that Santonio Holmes Superbowl catch in the endzone. Let’s say he caught the ball, then halfway down to the ground (0.25 seconds or so later) he dropped the ball. By this new rule you propose, that would count as a completion. Is that the rule you want?
This catch wasn’t really close enough to the sideline for that to even cross my mind.
Now when a receiver makes a leaping or diving grab, or gets crushed by a defender as the ball hits his hands, and then hits the turf I often find myself asking, “Did he hold on to that?” Unless, of course, he obviously didn’t as we saw yesterday.
Here’s the Santonio Holmes catch. Watching it, I think I’d be ok with a rule that said possession + 2 feet down is a catch and a TD, even if the ball spit up any time after the fact … as long as possession and control is clear at the precise moment the 2 feet touch.
There are enough honest opinions in this thread that are split down the middle on that exact issue to make your use of the word “obviously” to be absurd (complete with football move and everything).
Is that your proposed rule for outside the end zone as well? Because that would lead to about five fumbles a game.
Going back and looking at the Shockey catch, I’m ok with a rule making that a TD.
I was thinking about that and how the number of completions, scores, and fumbles would go up. It would be interesting to see plays that would be deemed fumbles under this proposed rule.
Oh, sorry, not sure which thread I posted it to. Here is a link to the game highlights, and Shockey’s play starts at 0:40. They don’t slow-mo it or even replay it, but you can see it.
IN a nutshell, he catches the ball in the air, one leg comes down, the second leg starts a downward motion. Just as his toe barely grazes the top of the turf – not the ground proper, but the turf sticking up out of the ground – he gets hammered and the ball pops out. It was ruled a touchdown.
Seattle challenged the call. On review, in excrutiating slow motion zoom it is clear that just for a fraction of a asecond his toe brushed the top of the turf before the defender knocked the ball out. But as the rules were at the time, it was ruled a touchdown.
For any reasonable viewer, this was clearly a case of good defense getting screwed by a stupid, nitpicky rule. They could have done nothing better than they did to defend that pass, and Shockey was clearly unable to hold the ball any longer than he did.
Conversely, in Megatron’s case of clearly getting screwed, is there anything he could have done to prevent the incompletion?
The answer is obvious, and that’s the critical difference between bad rulings. The Shockey ruling was bad because it screwed excellent play. Megatron’s ruling was bad, but it screwed a terrible play by a dodo having a mental lapse. (In actuality, it wasn’t Megatron’ fault, because the coaches never explained to him what a catch is. Criminal.)
Much better, IMO, to screw the boneheaded play than the excellent plays. On the other thing, I’m stunned you’d call the Holmes catch a touchdown if he dropped it almost immediately after the catch. That goes against everything I believe in about football. Might as well play college or Arena league at that point.
Are you now claiming that he held onto it? Because you can pretty clearly see the ball come out of his hand.
I’m pretty sure completions and scoring would go down because your rule would make it incredibly risky to throw the ball at all.
Not true. Nobody has disputed that he let go of the ball, so that part is most assuredly “obvious.” The dispute is two-fold: 1) Whether his right hand (and ball) hitting the ground was part of his fall, and 2) whether we should just look the other way because even though he did let go of the ball, gosh darn-it it sure did feel like a catch.
The problem raised by the old rule (Shockey’s TD) invalidated excellent play. The problem raised by the current rule is easily avoided with rudimentary coaching. Seems like a clear no-brainer to me.
Honest to god? Really?!? Is it a fumble or incompletion when a guy makes an 8 yard run into the endzone, throws it into the ground and yells “woo!”? Because I’m pretty sure it leaves his hand at that point, too.
No, I’m saying there’s a legitimate argument that not only did it come out of his hand, it came out of his hand after he caught it, came down on two feet, was shoved, made a step, fell on his ass, had his other hand come down, and then the ball came out of his other hand.
The fact that you’re evading that says a great deal.
No, what you’re saying is the disputed part. That being whether or not he fell or he made several distinct moves. The ball coming out is the one thing everyone agrees on, which is the part he called obvious.
Personally I think it’s clearly obvious that it was all one fall. In other words, there was no way on god’s green earth he could have NOT gone to the ground. (He could have held onto the ball, though.)
The curious evasion is you comparing it to a running play where possession is already established. That’s clearly irrelevant to the question(s) at hand.
Sorry - “shoved” there was too much. Contact, at the very least.
Absolutely. And I think both sides have strong arguments - it’s foolish to dismiss either side with ridiculous absolutes like “obviously”.