aka every wide receiver in the league. 
Schefter is reporting Manning has been playing for a month with a torn right quad. That would explain the sudden loss of arm strength. Which means he could come back next year just fine. But the Broncos fans that booed him, and the organization that’s firing the coaches, may have just screwed that chance.
The key is that was “going to the ground” in that catching process…even with the two/three steps.
It’s obvious in this vine that he begins the process of going to the ground after he catches the ball.
Here is the applicable rule.
http://www.waitingfornextyear.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Catch-Rules.jpg
Here is a different angle where you can see the ball hit the ground (and pop up a bit)
Ergo he did not maintain control through the entire process of contacting the ground.
If may or may not be a good rule, but it was correctly called.
Those were not “steps” in any meaningful sense, they were incidental contact in the process of falling to the ground. A “step” is a controlled planting of the foot, there was no control in those “steps”.
The ball did not get a little wobbly, it bounced off the turf and out of his hand. This entire process took about a second, during which time Dez and the ball were effectively falling together. The fact that it bounced off the ground, out of his hand, indicates that he never actually had control of the ball.
It seems fairly clear (at least to me) that Dez did have control of the ball and that he lost control of it when he hit the ground. So it’s incomplete by the current rules. In my view, that play should be a catch, but it’s hard to create a rule that gives the “right” “common sense” ruling in all situations, and of course people will disagree on what’s a common sense catch in the first place.
Exactly. I saw a blog post that essentially said this. People have a visual perception of what a “catch” looks like that is sometimes at odds with the specific rubric created by the NFL.
Arriving at a commonly held “common sense” definition of a catch that applies to all situations is darn near impossible.
Having just rewatched the catch a few times (beagledave’s first link is a good angle), I remain baffled that this play is at all controversial. After the ball popped up, Bryant caught it lying on his back. If the ball had landed on the ground instead, I think everyone who has watched more than a handful of NFL games would recognize that as a play that is called incomplete close to 100% of the time: receiver catches ball and immediately begins to fall, ball contacts ground and pops out of receivers hand, end of play. The fact that it landed on Bryant, who then “caught” it, seems to be confusing to people, but it’s completely immaterial. It’s clearly the right call, and I even like the rule. It’s a high bar to make a completion (as is the two feet in-bounds rule), but that standard is part of what makes great catches great.
Relevant parts of the NFL catch rule
Dez pretty clearly was inbounds, secured control of the ball, IMO, long enough to make a football move. He certainly touched both feet inbounds. So yes, he met a, b and c. BUT the replay clearly shows that he lost control of the ball in the process of contacting the ground, and in the process the ball contacted the ground.
So, for purposes of this rule, as written, the only real factual question is whether he went to the ground in the act of catching the pass (and therefore did not satisfy item 1). IMHO, that’s pretty easy to answer: he certainly didn’t fall down intentionally – he would rather have walked/run into the end zone, right? So either he fell in the act of catching the pass; or he caught the pass, had complete control sufficient to not fall to the ground, and then, completely independently of the catch, stumbled/tripped so as to fall. Well the second possibility is pretty ludicrous, so I’m left with the conclusion that: Dez went to the ground, lost control, and the ball contacted the ground. Therefore he did not meet Item 1 and it was properly ruled an incomplete.
Apparently, Belichick did exactly what he intended to do, for the reasons people speculated. He figured that defending against two Hail Mary passes was better than risking 3 hand offs.
I am equally baffled to to why there is any controversy. The play is visibly and obviously an incomplete pass. It touched the ground and came losse in the process of Bryant hitting the ground after his jump. Incomplete. The rule is quite clear.
I can see why at first viewing one might be upset out of the belief the ball did not touch the ground, but in fact it did.
I think the argument is he was “down by contact” (and the play thus over) before the ball hit the ground.
This article on Deadspin makes many of my points regarding the Bryant catch/non-catch better than I could’ve.
As for some specifics:
I’m sure it is. Not being all that much of a football fan, I can’t speak for whether this has been a long-running controversy. But new or old, it still doesn’t make any sense to me.
Sure, I get that. And technically, I think, the question is whether it was a “completion,” not a “catch.” But. I saw Bryant make an actual catch, a catch as pretty much any grade school student would define it: He had possession of the ball. The catch then became a non-catch because of something that happened *after *he caught the ball, as far as I understand it. Don’t you think that’s weird?
And is there really an analogy in another sport? In baseball, if you catch the ball to force the runner at second, then drop the ball as you’re trying to complete the relay to first, it’s still a catch. The runner being forced is still out. I mean, I know the baseball rule book can be complex at times, but football seems to take this to extremes. Now, I follow baseball very closely, maybe too closely to be a fair judge of this. Maybe the weirdities of baseball are too ingrained in me to recognize just how weird they are. But I follow hockey and basketball about the same as I do football, and I’ve never run into rules in these sports that seem to defy common sense the way this one does and the “forward pass into the ground” one did.
I could easily be wrong. Just seems to me that football takes this kind of thing to a new level.
Not necessarily. But I would like a catch to be a catch, and a forward pass to be a forward pass. I’d like to enjoy the game without having to wonder whether every play I saw was “real,” or whether it’s going to be overturned by some rule that most people don’t know exists, that fewer still can agree on what it means, and that practically nobody seems to understand why it exists. Apparently I’m asking for the moon!
(By the way, I have no doubt that the Bryant call was absolutely correct. I just think it’s a really strange rule.)
I dunno. This sounds like post hoc justification to me.
Belichick says he didn’t want to risk losing the ball to the Ravens in a regular play. So he instead ran a series that resulted in a certain turnover to the Ravens. He gave them possession of the ball in order to avoid taking a chance they would get possession of the ball?
That’s true, but when a rule requires an almost biblical exegesis to convince folks used to a common-sense notion of what “catch” means, this is something the NFL should look at. My fear is, this rule has been built up over decades by adding patch upon patch, and if the competition committee does look at making changes, it will probably be to pile on yet another layer of byzantine interpretation.
I would much prefer it if the NFL simply recognized the virtue of simplicity and overhauled the rule. Yes, there would still be controversial plays; no matter how the rule is written controversies will occur, and hoping to capture the perfect rule is a fool’s errand. But to be honest, was the problem the committee tried to solve by adding the “move common to the game of football” and “process of the catch” rubrics really worse than this?
Yes. It’s all about field position and clock remaining. He was ok with the Ravens getting the ball on their own 20 with 10 seconds left. He did not want to risk giving them the ball on the Patriots 20 with a minute left.
I trust you see the difference in those scenarios?
Note that refs hardly ever call PI on hail mary passes, leaving New England able to do anything they want in the end zone short of actually stabbing someone.
I think I may have witnessed that, actually
Since you’re familiar with baseball, you’re familiar with the fact that if a fielder catches a ball (either a batted ball in flight or a throw to create an out at a base), but the ball pops out of his mitt, it isn’t a catch. If it’s relevant, the umpire will attempt to determine if the ball was caught and lost transferring to the player’s throwing hand, or simply not caught. In other words, the player has to possess the ball long enough to make a move common to the game of baseball: transferring to the throwing hand. He doesn’t have to make the transfer successfully, but has to have possessed the ball long enough to do so.
To take the closest analogy, imagine a fielder dives for a batted ball in flight. He catches the ball in his glove and holds it there as his body, out-of-control, careens towards the ground. As he hits the ground, the contact with the ground causes the ball to immediately pop out. Is that a catch? Generally not.
In that case, you’d think that they’d delay the kneeldown or run some little bootleg to try to waste time.
Yeah, I agree. The problem is that this always comes up when “obvious” calls like this one go the wrong way, so the rule is changed, which just causes some other obvious mistake later, so the rule gets patched again.
If you just make the rule something about “catch + two feet or another body part down”, then there will be diving catches where the receiver only has the ball for some small fraction of a second before crashing to the ground and losing it. If you take out the “football move” stuff, then you’ll have receivers “catching” for a fraction of a second and then immediately fumbling when hit by a defender.
RickJay, the rule as strictly applied in this situation isn’t the least bit controversial. People in these threads constantly talk past each other-the real debate here is between the is and ought of.
My beef is that the rule doesn’t precisely define the period of time between the instant that the receiver does get his hands around the oblate spheroid in question, and said contact with the ground (or opponent-same thing in this case). If that is indeed the case (and reading the rule half a dozen times, they abjectly refuse to define this “long enough” period in a rigorous fashion, with “process” being far too nebulous a term), then it can lead to reductio ad absurdum outcomes:
What if, instead of stumbling off balance for 3 steps like he did here, Dez stumbles forward for 4-5-6-7-8 (say close to a 10 yard distance), performing no other “acts common to the game” in the process, only then finally giving way to gravity/leverage of the defender, falling to the ground, where the ground causes it to become loose like it did here?
I think 99% of the fans out there would see that call as being utterly absurd-yet that is the way it would have to be called, if I am reading the quoted rule above correctly.
Likewise, Calvin Johnson performed one full roll of his body in the end zone on that other play-what if he rolls 3-4-5 times and then does what he did there, placing the ball on the ground? Another absurd incomplete pass?
I’d say 3 steps and or 2 steps and a knee/butt/shoulder down “immunizes” you from having it ruled incomplete, IF the ball subsequently goes loose (vs. going loose at the moment of impact with the ground/defender before those criteria are met). No ambiguity there.
Back in the 80s, I saw the Oilers try that. I think it was against Oakland. Didn’t exactly work as wanted, iirc, and everyone was talking about how risky it was.
Apparantly coaches must think so, too, as I have not seen it done since. Kneel down or straight forward run plays