There is some pretty stellar cornerback play in this Broncos/Colts game. It’s fun to watch.
With apologies to my Denver friends, I love seeing the Bronco’s season end early. Good job Indy! Take it all the way!
Oh yuck, my least favorites are winning (NE, Indy). At least I don’t have to see the Steelers for another year. I’ll have to root hard for Green Bay from here on but the way Aaron was limping I’m not optimistic.
I hate seasons where I end up reduced to only having teams to root against.
Based on that default, I guess I’m pulling for Indy and the Pack.
To the fans of the teams left, congrats! This has been a hard hitting year for everyone.
You can see in the multiple views they kept replaying in slow motion that the ball clearly hit the ground causing one end of it to bounce up.
That one was an easy call once they showed the replay.
Listening to the Broncos post-game news conference, it sure sounds like Peyton Manning just played his last game.
I won’t be surprised at all. He seriously faded in the second half of the season, and it was apparent today that while he knew what he needed to do, he just couldn’t any more.
Well, he got the Broncos to a Super Bowl, only the third QB to do so, and he was worth signing.
And now I guess I’m just a spectator. I don’t especially like any of the four teams left, and I don’t especially dislike any of them. All I have left to hope for is good Super Bowl commercials.
Oh, I guess I can hope for a nice snow in Massachusetts next Sunday afternoon. I haven’t caught a good snow game this year.
That was depressing to watch. He seemed to be only able to complete 3-yard dump-off passes. Anything over 10 yards was hideously loopy, wobbly, and way off the mark. A shell of himself.
That being said, shame on the Denver fans in the stadium for booing him.
I’m a Packers fan and can agree that was a close call. Still not as bad as the hail Mary “catch” that Seattle got against the Pack.
Brian
So what was up with the Patriots kneeling down on the ball at the end of the game? As we saw, it wasn’t the very end of the game - the Patriots ended up turning the ball back over to the Ravens with fourteen seconds on the clock.
It ended up not being a factor because the Patriots were able to knock the ball down in the endzone. But if could easily have gone the other way and the Ravens would have won the game.
So why did Belichick and Brady give them the opportunity for a last-second win? Why didn’t they run some running plays that would have burn up the clock and prevented a turnover?
I used to think that one of my issues with the NFL was that everything is so ambiguous. Do you cheer after your team makes a great catch or induces a fumble? Well, yeah, but the play so often doesn’t stand: you just never know when a flag is going to be thrown, when a challenge is going to be upheld. That doesn’t add to the fun.
Then I thought, no, it’s not the ambiguity is the problem, it’s that everything is so legalistic. The judgments so often seem to be based on obscure rules that no one has ever heard of. Throw in rules about ineligible receivers and the like and it sometimes seems that what’s happening is less a physical contest than a massive game of Who Knows the Rules Better.
But now I’ve changed my mind again. It’s not just legalistic-ness, it’s that so many of the rules seem so completely counterintuitive. Today I watched a guy catch a pass, only it was not actually a catch, because…because something about “football moves” and I don’t know what all else, and even though I am told by several very knowledgeable people that this was indeed the correct call according to the rules and…it just seems insane to me. (And I say this as someone who was rooting for the Packers.)
It reminds me of the game in the snow in New England when the quarterback was sacked and fumbled the ball, but no! It wasn’t a fumble! Because he was actually in the act of making a forward pass! Now, it wasn’t a forward pass by any reasonable definition of a forward pass; the ball was pointing straight down, so if he was passing the ball he was passing to a mole, but the rules said it was a forward pass, and I have been assured again that this is the correct call, and again I have to say this is insane.
Oh well. End of rant. I do wonder, if I knew the rules better would I find it easier to accept that the NFL seems tom have its very own definitions for common words like “catch” and “pass”? A puzzlement.
Seriously go look at the Calvin Johnson not-a-catch from 2010. This is all very old news.
Every sport has incredibly legalistic rules, developed over decades, and in the case of baseball, centuries. There are no common words in these rules; every one of them is defined precisely to within an inch of its life.
The alternative is to just say “it’s a catch if a ref says it is, no reviews”. Is that what you want?
The receiver probably knew that by transferring the ball to one hand and stretching it out, he was performing a “football move” (“maintaining control long enough to pitch it, pass it, advance with it…”).
After he caught the ball and secured it, he attempted to stretch it over the goal line. This means that if he lost control of the ball after this stretch attempt, it would be a fumble, not an incomplete catch. Fortunately for the receiver, the ground can’t cause a fumble so in this case it would not have been ruled a fumble.
Because he took his other hand off and attempted to stretch, the ruling should have been a completed catch.
I thought the Bryant catch was rightly incomplete. He was bobbling it when he was catching it and fell on the ground and the ball hit the ground and moved.
Anyway how bout that Patriots trick play with the receiver declaring himself ineligible. I didn’t even know you could do that. I’ve never seen that before. It’s legal per the league but John Harbaugh sure was mad. Seems to me like bordering on unsportsmanlike deception but deception is how you win games 
Also loved the pass TD by Amendola. Hoodie showed all his tricks. I wonder what he has left
Agreed, a very dumb rule. Both Calvin’s and Dez’s were outstanding catches that should be considered completions, but the strict interpretation of the rule says otherwise. Removing your Cowboys hate or love from the situation, all football fans should be disappointed in this ruling because it overturned a magnificent fourth down conversion and took the chance for an all-time great game off the table. Aaron Rodgers could have led the Packers on a game-clinching drive to cement his legacy as one of the best ever. There could have even been time for Romo to lead another comeback and shake off his choker rep or toss a pick and live up to it. Instead of any of those storylines, we’re talking about the refs… again. Get it together NFL
Not according to the explanation from the official.
They need to outlaw those damn gloves, then (non-)catches like this would stop being an issue.
It’s not a dumb rule.
The point of the rule it to make it clear it’s an incomplete when a receiver dives for a ball, gets it on his hands, but the ball pops out when he hits the ground. That happens a couple times a game, and everyone agrees that should not be a catch. If the rule wasn’t there, the receiver could argue exactly what Dez is saying: He had control until the moment he was down, and only after that did the ball come out.
Now if you can exactly define the difference between the common diving situation, and the Dez situation, in a way that referees can apply, and that doesn’t make the rulebook even longer and harder to interpret, and doesn’t screw up the rules for any other common situation, then knock yourself out. Heck, post it here to show us how much smarter you are than the league.