NFL Catch Rule Committee Looks To Dez Bryant, Calvin Johnson To Define A ‘Catch’
The NFL’s catch rule has been a lightning rod for controversy ever since the Dallas Cowboys’ Dez Bryant was determined in replay to have missed a fourth-down catch in a playoff game at Green Baby last year. Due to all the confusion, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has formed a six-member committee to define what exactly constitutes a catch in football, but it is possible Bryant will be enlisted as an unofficial seventh member of the committee.
In a related report by the Inquisitr, a NFL referee once raised some eyebrows by using the throws of Tim Tebow as an uncatchable rule example.
During the football offseason, the NFL’s catch rule was tweaked to say that a receiver had to be a runner after making the catch in order to qualify. Besides running, the NFL catch rule also specific that the receiver must have control of the ball and both feet in bounds. Previously, a receiver just had to make a “football act” while maintaining possession, but some thought this definition of the rule was open to interpretation.
“Once you go down that path, it becomes more subjective,” said Dean Blandino, the NFL’s vice president of officiating, according to an earlier 2015 report by ESPN. “What is, what isn’t a football move. We’re not talking about a lot of plays over the course of the five seasons since the Calvin Johnson play. This allows us to consistently officiate the rule.”
When the last rule change was made, St. Louis Rams coach Jeff Fisher argued that introducing any more factors beyond being a runner would make the NFL catch rule tough to define.
“If you’re going to the ground, hang on to the ball. It’s really pretty simple,” Fisher said. “To include if you become a runner, I think it really cleans things up for us. If you start talking about reaching the ball out, you invite a lot of gray area back into the interpretation.”
The newly formed committee will consider the current NFL catch rule and 20 years of the history of the catch rule, but it is uncertain what potential tweaks they will make to the system, if any.
“We don’t know what will come out of it,” Blandino said. “Maybe there’s something the (competition) committee hasn’t considered in the past.”
Based upon the wording of the current NFL catch rule, the infamous catch by Dez Bryant would still have been called incomplete. When Bryan was asked about the newly formed committee, he just said, “That’s cool!”
Blandino says the NFL committee will certainly be looking for feedback from NFL players, including Bryant and Calvin Johnson, but he also argues that the number of questionable calls by referees for catches has not increased in recent years.
“Ever since that play in the playoffs, it’s been a lot more in the forefront,” Blandino said. “After we put in the ‘Calvin Johnson Rule’ (in 2010), it seemed like the whole season there was so much focus on the catch.”
The NFL needs a “Committee” to look at the catch rule? They are becoming like the US government and all the bureaucracy. Stop it!
— Greg Gabriel (@greggabe) December 11, 2015
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[Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images]
