Controversial catch rule gone

‘Survive the ground’ banished as NFL votes in new criteria

Our long, irrational nightmare is over. “Completing the catch to the ground” is dead in the NFL.

League owners unanimously voted Tuesday in favour of a replacement catch rule, proposed by the league’s competition committee.

The new, streamlined rule no longer includes thick language describing the despised concept requiring a pass-catcher to maintain firm possession of the ball throughout the process of falling to the ground. Or “surviving the ground.”

The new rule requires only control of the ball, either two feet down or another body part and a football move (such as, but not limited to, a third step down or reaching the ball forward) or the ability to have performed such a move.

The old catch rule had been the most hated in the book, if not in all of North American pro sports.

The new rule, if retroactively enforced, would have made catches out of the infamous Dez Bryant ( 2014 playoffs versus Green Bay) and Jesse James (December versus New England) incompletions, both of which looked for all the world like good catches, but were overturned on replay.

Since NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said before the Super Bowl he wanted the competition committee to try to come up with a clearer and less controversial rule, committee members pored over plays going back decades.

They decided as a group to pick borderline plays they wanted to be catches, then set about drafting up the language to make them catches.

“The language they came up with I thought was very good,” Cincinnati Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis, a former committee member, said. “People can understand it a little bit better. And the subjectivity can be defined and cut down a little bit, which is good.”

Lewis rightly pointed out that there still will be some subjectivity involved with the new rule — for instance, not everyone will always agree on whether a pass- catcher had the time and ability to perform a football move — and there could more catches now, as well as more fumbles.

But competition committee chair Rich McKay said the committee couldn’t find many examples of fumbles after a receiver impacted the ground in the field of play — plays that in the past would have been ruled incomplete.

Owners approved two more of the 10 playing- rule proposals. One makes permanent the experimental rule to spot the ball at the 25-yard line after a touchback rather than the 20. The other allows the central replay command operation in New York to instruct on-field officials to disqualify a player for a “flagrant football act when a foul for that act is called on the field.”

Six other playing-rules proposals had yet to be voted on. A seventh — limiting defensive pass interference to 15 yards except when the foul is egregious and intentional — was pulled Monday by the New York Jets.

Owners also approved four of 12 bylaw proposals. One permanently liberalizes rules for timing, testing and administering physicals to draft prospects at a club’s own facility. Another makes it easier to reacquire a waived player. Another allows clubs to trade a player on injured reserve. And another replaces the 10- day post- season claiming period with a 24- hour period.

CHANGE FOR PROTECTION

Meanwhile, in a landmark rule change aimed to protect NFL players as much from themselves as from others, owners unexpectedly banned all players from lowering their helmet to initiate contact with another player anywhere on the body, from head to toe.

Tacklers can no longer do it. Nor can blockers, ball- carriers, passrushers, gunners — no one.

The rule reads simply: “Lowering the head to initiate contact with the helmet is a foul.”

Penalty for the foul? Fifteen yards with the possibility of disqualification. If committed by a defender, it’s 15 yards plus an automatic first down.

NFL competition committee chair Rich McKay said that coaches endorsed the new rule as actively as the league’s health and safety principals.

“The coaches were most vociferous about, ‘Hey listen, this needs to change. The tactic needs to change and we’re ready for change,’” McKay said.

“So we decided that we would rewrite that point of emphasis and rewrite that clarification into a playing rule.”

It replaces the short- lived rule that banned contact led by the crown of the helmet, a foul seldom called since its implementation a few years ago.

“For us, this is a pretty significant change,” McKay said. “This is not situational protection.”

Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice-president of health and safety policy, said about one-third (38 per cent, according to the NFL) of all concussions in 2015 were caused by helmet- to- helmet hits, but that number shot up last season to nearly half (46 per cent).

“I think this is a very proud day for the NFL,” Miller said.

The league’s chief medical officer Dr. Allen Sills said in January the record-high number of concussions ( 190) was unacceptable and the league had to and would act fast on making the game safer.

“This is part of that response,” Sills said. “This is a very key component of that injury- reduction strategy.”

Chris Nowinski, co- founder of the Concussion Legacy Foundation and often the NFL’s harshest critic when it comes to player safety regarding brain injuries, said in an email to Postmedia: “Using penalties to encourage change to more safe behaviours is a proven method of improving outcomes. While I am sure some players and referees will struggle with the adjustment initially, having fewer head impacts is in the best interests of the players.

“I welcome this new rule trial, and am confident it will also be monitored closely to ensure it does note create more dangerous unintended consequences.”