NFL sets new definition for controversial catch rule

The NFL’s rule making competition committee is poised to change the sport’s controversial catch rule by eliminating provisions related to slight movement of the football in a receiver’s hands and the goingto-the-ground requirement.

The modifications could be presented to owners at next week’s annual meeting in Orlando, according to Troy Vincent, the league’s executive vice president of football operations.

“We worked backward,” Vincent said. “We looked at plays and said: Do you want that to be a catch? And then we applied that to the rule.

“Slight movement of the ball, it looks like we’ll reverse that. Going to the ground, it looks like that’s going to be eliminated. And we’ll go back to the old replay standard of reverse the call on the field only when it’s indisputable.”

The new catch rule, Vincent said, will require only that a receiver have control of the football, and any slight movement of the football in the receiver’s hands detected via replay review would not result in an incompletion.

The new rule will eliminate the requirement that a receiver who is in the process of going to the ground while making a catch must maintain control of the football while on the turf to be awarded a legal catch.

“The Dez Bryant play, that’d be a catch” under the new rule, Vincent said, mentioning a series of controversial non-catch calls over the years. “The Jesse James play, that’d be a catch.”

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said at the Super Bowl that he wanted the committee to start from scratch in rewriting the catch rule.