Everyone watching the Detroit Lions at the Chicago Bears on Sunday had the same reaction to what is the early leader for most-discussed play of the 2010 NFL season, including covering Side Judge Mike Weatherford and helpless Chicago Bears defenders nearest the scene of the crime, Danieal Manning and Zackary Bowman.
It was a catch.
There is no shortage of topics being discussed in the aftermath of this ruling. I’ve read proclamations this was hard evidence that gambling among NFL officials is rampant. I’ve read fans on both sides of the Detroit-Chicago fence saying it was a bad call. I’ve read fans on both sides of that same fence saying it was, technically, the correct call. More than anything else, I’ve read that a lot of people think this really should call for a rewriting of the rule.
With the exception of the gambling piece, which I find to be somewhere between Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck on the crazy-alarmist scale, I found myself of all those opinions and more yesterday.
As a long-time football watcher, I saw a catch and touchdown.
As a long-suffering Lions fan, I saw a miraculous scoring drive capped by an outstanding catch to somehow snatch a victory in a game in which my favorite team had exhibited relatively few signs on life on offense after quarterback Matthew Stafford was injured late in the second half.
As an official, I thought I saw a touchdown, but wondered whether the ball coming loose after striking the ground wasn’t going to be discussed and/or reviewed. Upon review and disallowing of the catch, the football watcher and Lions fan were understandably puzzled, but the official’s first reaction was that it was an opportunity to really gain a better understanding of the rule and its application. After all, a man who has learned and accomplished much more in officiating the game and its rules than I could ever hope to do took a nice long look at the same video replays I was watching and concluded it was, indeed, not a catch.
After quite a bit of reviewing the play and reading the rules and accompanying ‘note’ being cited over and over again in the media in defending the call, I think I’m pretty confident in saying they really just kicked that call.
And that rubs football watchers, Lions fans, and football officials the wrong way pretty much every time, though the football official is always going to be the most-understanding if not the only ones who will offer any sympathy whatsoever.
Well, there are the handfuls of sports writers who want to be on the other side of fan reaction, who write columns about how the officials got it right and cite the rules and notes they don’t actually understand, but figure they’re pretty safe to agree.
They deserve no sympathy, but that’s for another time.
Beginning with the basics of the situation, from an officiating standpoint, you have to determine when the pass in the air is no longer a loose ball (by definition, a pass is a loose ball). If the ball is caught, it is no longer a loose ball and is then in possession of a player. Otherwise, a ball could become dead and, hence, no longer a loose ball, if it comes into contact with the ground inbounds or out-of-bounds, or touches someone or something that is out-of-bounds.
I’m going to disregard all the other ways the ball would become no longer loose here because they don’t apply. You know, the ball striking a dog running loose on the field, for example.
It was this out-of-bounds thing that really got me thinking about the play critically, to be honest, so that’s where I’ll start.
Watching the left hand of Calvin Johnson as he was going through the ‘process’ of completing the catch (which is a ridiculous phrase, when you hear it), it gets very near to the end line, which would make him out-of-bounds well before the ball strikes the ground and comes loose. Now, I don’t have the film the NFL does and am, hence, unable to determine whether that hand did actually contact the end line where it looked like it might have. If we just decide that it did touch the end line, however, it puts a different light on the entire play.
With the ball dead at that point, you then would have to decide whether a catch has been completed. Otherwise, the ruling would be that the player was out-of-bounds before catching the ball.
That would be a tough sell in any situation because I think we all agree that Johnson had exhibited up to that point pretty much everything you would require from a receiver in what you look for in ruling a catch. He certainly secured the ball with his hands before the ball touched the ground and he also certainly touched the ground inbounds with both feet (and a knee…and both buttcheeks…and a hand before it potentially slid out-of-bounds).
I admittedly don’t have access to the NFL rule book. I’ve seen it. It’s massive. It’s a LOT more massive than the rule books we use at the high school level. Hence, there is a certain level of the unknown here, but I’ve yet to see anything that would dissuade me from defining that play, at that point, as a catch.
I do have one part of the rule book I’ve seen quoted a few times today:
“If the player loses the ball while simultaneously touching both feet or any part of his body other than his hands to the ground, or if there is any doubt that the acts were simultaneous, it is not a catch.”
Now, it seems to me that the intent of this particular ‘article’ from the rule book would be in the case of a receiver losing control of a ball at the moment he strikes the ground, regardless of whatever degree of control he may have exhibited while in the air. For me, once two feet contact the ground, there is no obligation to maintain control of the ball other than through that brief gray area of being somewhat ‘simultaneous’ with contacting the ground.
Hence, we still have a catch. There’s no world in which the ball struck the ground anywhere near simultaneously with the receiver contacting the ground.
Then there’s the other little ‘item’ being cited by the sportswriters as they attempt to sound so much more knowledgeable than everyone else.
“Item 1: Player Going to the Ground. If a player goes to the ground in the act of catching a pass (with or without contact by an opponent), he must maintain control of the ball after he touches the ground, whether in the field of play or the end zone. If he loses control of the ball, and the ball touches the ground before he regains control, the pass is incomplete. If he regains control prior to the ball touching the ground, the pass is complete.”
I’ll be the first to admit there is a LOT of room for interpretation here, which is maybe how some will continue the masquerade of agreeing with the call in the face of all logic.
Johnson definitely went “to the ground in the act of catching a pass.” That cannot be disputed.
The word that really screws things up here is ‘after.’
Wha?
After?
What does that mean in this case? He must maintain control ‘after’ he ‘touches the ground,’ but there is no real definition of how long ‘after’ touching the ground the ball goes from being loose to being a catch and in control and possession of the ball.
There is, indisputably, some degree of time ‘after’ Johnson secures the ball with his hands, maintaining control and contacting the ground with two feet AND a knee, but before the ball strikes the ground.
However, is that control maintained through the undefined amount of time called ‘after?’ I mean, technically, a full minute later would be ‘after.’ Exactly what is the qualifying principle allowing the receiver to assume he has completed a catch and can just get on with his day?
If this makes your head hurt, I would apologize, but training as a sports official makes you read and re-read rules with exactly this sort of thought process.
Ultimately, I think the wave of call for the rule to be changed is a little overdone. The rules aren’t really the problem. It’s the wording of an ‘article’ under a rule that needs a little clarification. Don’t be surprised if the NFL somewhat quietly makes this change to the wording to make sure that what we all see and agree to be is not overly adjudicated due to the influence of a lot of unnecessary verbiage.
Where the goal would be for the rule book to make clear that the correct call in this and any other case would match exactly what the eyes of all other observers tell them the result of the action is, the NFL has failed.
Unfortunately, even if the entire NFL officiating community comes out tomorrow and agrees the ruling was faulty, the only relevant result will remain unchanged: the Lions take the loss.
Bright side? Higher draft pick than we’d otherwise be seeing come spring…that’s all I got.
