One foot between the goals, but two feet in the endzone. And in CFB, the ground absolutely cannot cause a fumble, because the player with the ball is always down when they hit the ground and cannot get up even untouched.
If he had possession (two steps says he did) and any part of the ball crossed the front of the goal line, then it’s a touchdown, doesn’t matter what happens after that.
This is different from the Steelers play where the player did not have possession so the ball crossing the line can’t be a touchdown.
This flow chart first appeared on Reddit and has since been reprinted in news stories. I suggest taking a look to help understand the rule.
That flow chart isn’t accurate.
You can…
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Catch the ball.
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Have it not hit the ground.
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Have both feet inbounds.
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Become a runner.
…And have it not be a catch if…
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You lode the ball while running (it slips out, is knocked out by contact).
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On review the receiver didn’t fully control the ball even while running (he was bobbling it, it was moving around in his arms too much).
I’ve seen this exact scenario happen in a couple of games, where the guy actually seems to catch the ball and move 2 or 3 steps but loses the ball and what you’d think was a fumble was incomplete. Or if this was in the end zone, what would be a TD is ruled incomplete.
I wish the catch rule really was simple enough that this flow chart fully explains it, but it won’t. 
Not fully.
If you’re still bobbling the ball then you aren’t becoming a runner.
I thought the flowchart forgot the box for “Is your name Calvin Johnson?”
After seeing it on Youtube a few times I have to join the Steelers were robbed chorus. To me he caught it and made a football move in lunging for the end zone. But they still had 3 downs to punch it in and couldn’t. I wish them better luck in the AFC championship.
What defines “becoming a runner” then? Which I know is another can of worms.
Having the ball and running with it seems like a good definition but if the ball isn’t secured enough before it’s lost that definition doesn’t work.
Sometimes these calls are pretty subjective… How secure must the ball be to be under your control? How long does it need to be held in one place? One second, two? How much movement is okay?
Lode Runner lives!
Me, I’d prefer that all subjectivity be eliminated, and make it hard one or two second count from the instant initial control is secured (yes, a hundreth second timer would need to be added to all feeds, at least privately). This “You’ve caught the ball but really you officially haven’t caught it yet” horsepuckey is at its core utterly nonsensical.
Check out #3 for all sorts of non-catches where the receiver seemed to have made a “football move”…
But it’s not a catch when your body is falling to the ground unless you maintain control on impact. Maybe your argument is based on his knee hitting the ground as he fell and he used that to push forward, but that doesn’the really change the fact that his body was still in process of falling to the ground.
This type of play happens pretty much every sunday.
That should be “lose” the ball (typing on my phone sucks) but I suppose zapping a hole in the field to avoid a tackle is probably a penalty of some kind.
The rules are clear and easy to understand, at least to me. I think the problem lately had been inconsistent rulings on replay on bang-bang plays.
The league replay people should be able to immediately give the broadcasters and the stadium video teams a clear visual explanation on this. Right now it can feel like they’re making it up, with only a former ref employed by the TV station shrugging his shoulders.
It’s hard to figure out how to reword the rule to have those close calls lean toward being a catch, but I’d like to see then work on it. One thing that could help is specifying how many video frames a receiver can hold a passed ball before other “is it a catch” considerations are then ignored.
“Football move” is no longer part of the rule. It was removed 10+ years ago.
Yeah, replaced by “having the ball long enough to clearly become a runner”…not much difference in the end.
[Waves from #28]
I even came up with an easy way for the on-the field officials to keep track of the time: they have a button on a handheld device, and an earpiece. Click the button, and one second later (take your pick) they get a beep. If the guy still has control when the beep goes off, it’s a catch.
I’m no expert by any means, but I wonder why the NFL ruling is so strict. If the football does not pop out of the receiver’s hands (or, chest - when clutching the ball close to the body) when he hits the ground…isn’t that good enough?
One foot is the rule in CFB anywhere on the field.
The NFL (and NCAA, since regardless of what the NCAA rulebook says will adopt the NFL interpretation since all of the major NCAA officiating coordinators are current/former NFL officials) will never be able to come up with a definition of “catch” that’s 100% enforceable and consistent. Regardless of whether replay is used, the mere existence of HD and 4K cameras and video will lead to second guessing and attempts to tweak the rule over and over.
You start with something easy, like the rules had 100 years ago - you have to “catch” the ball while inbonds. But then you try to prevent cheap turnovers, so bang-bang catch-drops in the field of play are officiated as incomplete passes instead of fumbles. But then this turns out that catch drops in the endzone are being officiated differently than those in the field of play, so you add in that the player must demonstrate control. Then you want to remove the ambiguity of that and start trying to define control. There’s no bottom to the rabbit hole.
The “all the way to the ground” interpretation trickled down to NCAA during the time I was an official. It was supposed to make the judgement easier, but you ended up with so many “well, obviously that should be a catch” situations that it really didn’t. There were questions about whether the interpretation would be different if the player went to the ground “on his own” rather than being contacted by a defender (contact meaning that that catch would be completed on the traditional interpretation of “possession” of control with one foot down, but no contact requiring keeping possession to the ground), then came all the football move nonsense etc etc.
Based on what I was taught, the Steelers play from a few weeks ago would have been ruled a catch because the reach counted as a move that demonstrated control, and the knee down was enough to establish possession. But I’ve been away from the game for a few years and I don’t know what guidance is being given now.
And THAT is the issue. A lot of these controversial plays have receivers establishing possession then diving as a football move called incomplete because the official claims the catch was made going to the ground. I have no problem with Dez Bryant’s playoff catch being ruled incomplete because he gained control as falling to the ground.
Let’s take these two scenarios:
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Receiver catches ball in end zone with two feet down and is untouched. Touchdown.
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Receiver catches ball in end zone with two feet down, but is hit .01, .1 or 1 second later and falls down and drops the ball.
In Scenario #2, it seems that in some of those circumstances, it will be ruled incomplete. But why? If in Scenario #1, the ball is dead and it is a touchdown immediately, why should subsequent contact, or even falling matter?
In the Steelers scenario, if James goes down at the 2 yard line it is a catch. Why then since he decides to lunge for the end zone afterwards does that make it not a catch? His going to the ground was not a part of the catch. He caught the ball, lunged for the end zone and the ball dislodged after the lunge.
It makes no sense to say that at moment X it is a catch, but subsequent action Y retroactively makes it not a catch.
It’s only a catch at the 2 yard line if he maintains control all the way to the ground. By concentrating on the holding on to the ball instead of lunging for the end zone he probably would have kept the ball from shifting and hitting the ground; and it would have been a catch. The rule is the same whether he’s he’s lunging for the end zone or on the 2.
However, all scoring plays are automatically reviewed. If the play ended on the 2 and it wasn’t challenged by the Patriots then the ruling on the field would have stood most likely, no matter what happened.
There are more scenarios required to make the contact vs no-contact similar:
1 - no-contact, two feet in, doesn’t fall, holds onto ball - touchdown
1b - no-contact, two feet in, falling to ground, holds onto ball after impact - touchdown
1c - no-contact, two feet in, falling to ground, loses control on impact - no touchdown
2 - contact, two feet in, doesn’t fall, holds onto ball - touchdown
2b - contact, two feet in, falling to ground, holds onto ball after impact - touchdown
2c - contact, two feet in, falling to ground, loses control on impact - no touchdown
The contact vs no-contact doesn’t really matter, the issue is whether the ball was caught according to the rules, if falling then you can’t lose control.
2 yard line vs end zone makes no difference whatsoever.
In both cases, because he was off the ground when he started the process of catching the ball, then he is required to maintain control when he hits the ground. And just having one body part touch the ground while the rest of the body is still falling doesn’t end the process. Meaning that just because his knee hit the ground the process of falling isn’t over, unless you could argue that he could have maintained that position if he wanted to.
If he landed vertically instead of at 30 degrees, and could have just sat there on his knees, then I think it’s fair to say that he is done falling to the ground. But given that he was at a pretty low angle and the rest of his body was still heading towards the ground for initial impact, it means he was still in process.
It’s not a catch until his body has completed the process of falling to the ground according to NFL rules.
These plays happen pretty much every single game, we see reviews and look to see if the person controlled the ball all the way through impact, and if he did then it’s a catch and if not it’s not.
Agreed that wouldn’t make sense which is exactly why the NFL rules don’t say that. They say it’s not a catch at moment X, it’s only a catch at moment X+n after all conditions have been satisfied.
There was one call a few years ago that still bothers me. A corner dives for a pass, grabs it a foot off the ground, does a tumble and comes up with the pick. What bothers me is that, though he had the ball firmly in both hands, his dive carried the ball straight into the turf. There is no way in hell that one could say he kept the ball off the ground (his hands were on both sides of it, not around it), which is part of catching a pass. I thought it should not have been a catch, but the refs thought otherwise.