Competition committee to recommend catch-rule changes

WEST PALM BEACH, FLA. » The NFL’s catch rule would get less complicated if team owners approve recommendations from the powerful competition committee.

One of the first orders of business when the league’s annual meetings begin Monday in Orlando, Florida, will be a proposal by the committee to clarify what is a catch. Commissioner Roger Goodell said during the week of the Super Bowl he would urge simplification of the rules.

“Catch/no catch is at the top of everyone’s minds,” Troy Vincent, the NFL’s football operations chief, said Wednesday before outlining the committee’s recommendations.

The owners will be asked to vote on clarifications that eliminate parts of the rule involving a receiver going to the ground, and that also eliminate negating a catch for slight movement of the ball while it is in the receiver’s possession. No calls in the last few years — not even pass interference — have caused more consternation than overturned catches in key situations, including those by Dez Bryant, Jesse James and Austin Seferian-Jenkins.

“We were at the point as far as players and particularly coaches who asked, ‘Why is that not a catch?’” Vincent said. “We talked to fans, coaches and players and we asked the groups, ‘Would you like this to be a catch?’ It was 100 percent yes.

“Then we began writing rules that actually apply to making these situations catches.”

Here’s what would constitute a catch if the owners approve the competition committee’s alterations: • control of the ball; • getting two feet down; • performing a football or; • performing a third step.

The stipulation that slight movement of the ball while the receiver still has control no longer would result in an incompletion. Vincent pointed to the touchdown catch by the Eagles’ Corey Clement in the Super Bowl as an example of a player never losing possession of the ball despite slight movement.

“That’s what the fans, coaches and players want,” Vincent said. “They are the act magical moments people are looking for, and that includes all of those (plays). It’s the biggest (proposed change). Why we want this is this is one call shaping results across the sport.”

Father: Bills receiver ‘going to be fine’ is

LOS ANGELES » Zay Jones is with family and is going to be fine, the Buffalo Bills receiver’s father said Wednesday, two days after his son was arrested following a naked, bloody argument with his brother.

Robert Jones posted a note on his Twitter account saying Jones “is with me and his mom,” while adding “he’s going to be fine!”

Online jail records also showed the player, whose legal name is Isaiah Avery Jones, had been released.

The 22-year-old Jones was arrested after officers were called to a disturbance in downtown Los Angeles, said police spokesman Luis Garcia. Jones was found “breaking glass doors and windows” and arrested on suspicion of felony vandalism, Garcia said.