NFL's head of officiating: No, Dez didn't catch it

[Irving Cowboy]

NFL's head of officiating: No, Dez didn't catch it; recent rule change wouldn't affect Cowboys playoff outcome
By Mike Heika

NFL vice president of officiating Dean Blandino said Friday that Dez Bryant's controversial "no catch" against the Green Bay Packers in January 2015 would not change under the new NFL rules.

"Still not a catch," Blandino said at the NFL Officiating Clinic, being held this weekend at the D-FW Airport Marriott in Irving.

Blandino commented on several rule changes, but the first one he had to deal with in North Texas was the league's decision to change the wording on the rule for what constitutes possession in catching a ball.

According to NFL Ops, the new rule is only clarifying what the old rule said:
The language pertaining to a catch was clarified to provide a better understanding of the rule. In order to complete a catch, a receiver must clearly become a runner. He does that by gaining control of the ball, touching both feet down and then, after the second foot is down, having the ball long enough to clearly become a runner, which is defined as the ability to ward off or protect himself from impending contact. If, before becoming a runner, a receiver falls to the ground in an attempt to make a catch, he must maintain control of the ball after contacting the ground. If he loses control of the ball after contacting the ground and the ball touches the ground before he regains control, the pass is incomplete. Reaching the ball out before becoming a runner will not trump the requirement to hold onto the ball when you land. When you are attempting to complete a catch, you must put the ball away or protect the ball so it does not come loose .

Blandino reiterated that the change is in the wording and not the rule.

"Control, plus two feet, plus time," he said. "Where we've gotten to is that everybody tends to agree what control and two feet look like, but it's that time element that tends to be the debatable subject. It is subjective, but what the time element means is having the ball long enough after the second foot is down to become a runner ... to have the ability to tuck the ball and turn upfield and do something with it other than just try to secure possession. What that time element allows the on-field officials to do is to consistently rule the bang-bang play incomplete. And that's important to us because the rules are written for on-field officials making decisions in real time seeing something once."

"So control, plus two feet, plus time," he added. "If you don't have those elements before you go to the ground, then the standard becomes hold onto it when you land. And if [the catch doesn't] survive the ground, then it's an incomplete pass. That's the rule in a nutshell."

Blandino said that catches that were ruled incomplete in the past will still be ruled incomplete.

"It's the same rule," he said. "The wording was meant to further clarify and to give the officials and everyone else something tangible as to the time element. What is the time element? It's not an all-inconclusive list, but what are some things you can look for to determine whether a player is transitioning from a receiver to a runner? That's what the intent is."

Blandino said the league has worked hard to educate teams and fans on this rule. He said they showed teams videos to explain the process .

"One of the things we did in January is we got former receivers together — Tim Brown, Cris Carter, Randy Moss, Steve Largent, Fred Biletnikoff, Chad Lewis — they looked at a lot of tape with us and they studied the rule, and the consensus was that the rule made sense. But there are always going to be those plays that are subject to debate."

Blandino added that the education of teams has been positive.

"We feel good about it," he said. "We feel like we've made some headway."

Blandino said the Bryant non-catch was a lightning rod because of how important it was in the outcome of the game, but added it was one of 30 or40 that were studied on a film reel.

"As far as we're concerned, the rule was applied the right way," he said.

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It's almost like this fuck thinks as long as he keeps the rule book as convoluted as possible, he will keep his job.

 

[Rynie]

Yes, he did. Even by your own retarded definition.

 

[bbgun]

 

[Doomsday]

Official on scene spotted the ball inside the one yard line, down by contact after the catch. Nothing in the video disputes that much less rising to the level of changing the on-the-field call.

Which, is what I've always said.

You don't even have to get into the nuance of the catch rule, to understand the on-the-field call takes precedent unless indisputable video evidence over-rules it. In this case clearly the video evidence did not, otherwise there would have been no controversy.

Once the official calls the play dead due to down by contact, it doesn't make one single solitary fuck if the ball then comes out. The man was DOWN before the ball came out.

 

[dbair1967]

This guy should seriously be fired.

Every time he opens his mouth a whole bunch of stupid shit comes out.

 

[Scot]

Obama?

 

[ZeroClub]

That team got robbed. Still frustrating.

 

[Midswat]

Still would've lost so can we stfu about this play finally?

 

[dbair1967]

^ fake fan

 

[Irving Cowboy]

League tells officials to err on the side of calling “bang-bang” passes incomplete
Posted by Mike Florio on July 18, 2016, 10:52 AM EDT

Whenever I think I finally understand it, I realize that I don’t. Which summarizes my own personal relationship with the catch rule over the past several years. And pretty much everyone else’s.

Recent changes to the rule book seem to reinforce the notion, as suggested by a key (but largely overlooked) ruling in the NFC playoff game between the Packers and Cardinals, that the NFL wants game officials to call a catch a catch if it looks like a catch. Applying the replay standard to the very specific language of the revised rule, it becomes much harder to find “indisputable visual evidence” that the receiver didn’t have the ball long enough to do the various things that he needs to have time to do.

Then came Friday, when NFL V.P. of officiating Dean Blandino sent arguably the opposite message.

“When it’s bang-bang, rule it incomplete,” Blandino told the league’s 124 game officials at an annual preseason clinic in Dallas, via Kevin Seifert of ESPN.com. “When in doubt, make it incomplete.”

Blandino’s advice to err on the side of calling a pass incomplete flows from his confidence that the ruling can be fixed via replay review, if there’s indisputable visual evidence that the player actually had the ball long enough.

“f we look at it on replay and it did appear the receiver had it long enough, then we change it and move on,” Blandino said. “Don’t change how you’re officiating these plays. Bang-bang is incomplete, and the time element allows us to be consistent on these bang-bang plays.”

So maybe there’s a way to harmonize this. Maybe a true bang-bang play should be called incomplete, if the player loses the ball immediately after the second foot comes down. And maybe that handful of plays every year involving players getting two feet down (and maybe a third, e.g., #DezCaughtIt) while going to the ground but not keeping control of the ball — plays in which the expectations of players, owners, coaches, fans, and media conflict with the ruling on the field and in the replay booth — will now result in a decision that the ball was caught, with the replay standard (if applied correctly) unable to overturn the ruling.

Or maybe not.

“There are going to be four or five plays like this every year where everybody says, ‘That’s got to be a catch. It looks like a catch,'” Blandino said. “On the playground, that’s a catch. In the school yard, that’s a catch. But it’s not under our rule, because he did not have the ball long enough to be a runner before he got to the ground.”

So instead of giving the people what they want (and, in turn, setting the stage for more catches, yards, and touchdowns), the NFL will continue to defy the expectations of its stakeholders and customers. Which will set the stage for more controversy and criticism and scrutiny.

There’s still hope. Maybe some officials, fully aware of how hard it will be to overturn the ruling on the field given the new language to the rule, will decide that they’re going to call it a catch if they think it looks like a catch.