NFL catch rule won’t be touched
The catch rule stays. NFL owners next week will consider 19 rules and 10 bylaw changes, from expanding replay, to eliminating all chop blocks, to ejecting a player flagged twice in a game for unsportsmanlike conduct.
But not one proposal addresses the controversial catch rule.
You know, the one that only referees, league executives and a handful of past and present competition-committee members fully grasps. So we’re stuck with it for at least another season. Oh bliss.
On a conference call Thursday, NFL VP of football operations Troy Vincent and competition committee chairman Rich McKay walked reporters through many of the new proposals.
The duo also explained why the powerful competition committee — comprising of eight team executives, GMs and head coaches — voted unanimously to leave the catch rule as is.
The rule’s wording was modified last year to underscore a three- step checklist: ( 1) having control of the ball, ( 2) having both feet on the ground and ( 3) having possession long enough to clearly establish oneself as a runner.
The third step was the rephrased section, which in most people’s minds — including coaches and players — has proved no clearer or less subjective than the controversial “complete the catch to the ground” element it replaced.
Because what exactly does “long enough” mean? A splitsecond? A half-second?
With confusion and controversy continuing to drape the rule all last season, commissioner Roger Goodell asked f or two groups of present and former stakeholders to be convened, to see what could be done to fix the rule. Answer? Nothing. The c ommittee s pent an “exorbitant” amount of time and mulled some “100 clips” of video, Vincent said, presumably until the whites of t heir eyeballs t urned crimson, during a series of meetings held at three locations since mid- February, including during the scouting combine in Indianapolis.
“We brought four current officials to Indy with us,” said McKay, a senior executive with the Atlanta Falcons. “It’s incredible how clear they are with respect to the rule, how the rule is to be administered, and how supportive they are of the current rule.
“There’s been this talk about ( finding) a more objective standard (but) I think they feel as on- field officials that would definitely hinder them, as they use the subjective standard of time.”
McKay added that each season now there are about 18,000 pass completions, compared to about 13,000 in 1990.
“Maybe it’s as many as six out of all of those in which we look at it frame-by-frame and say, ‘ Maybe he got that wrong.’ But in reality, that on-field official is officiating an awful lot of passes every game and getting them right.
“We’re at a good place, and we just have to keep applying the current rule, and keep educating our partners and the public and our fans.” So educate us! Of the 19 proposed rules changes, nine come from the competition committee, the other 10 from individual teams. The committee’s always are likeliest to be passed, because if the committee liked any club proposal enough it would have included it among its own suggestions.
First of all, the committee recommends that owners make permanent this past s eason’s e xperiment to lengthen the extra-point kick from 20 yards to 33. That is, to have it snapped from the 15- yard line instead of the two.
Kickers in 2015 missed 71 of 1,217 conversion kicks ( 94.2 per cent), after having made all but eight of 1,230 in 2014 ( 99.3 per cent) and all but five of 1,267 in 2013 (99.6 per cent).
Mission accomplished: the conversion kick is now a competitive play, which it hadn’t been in more than two decades.
Perhaps the next most newsworthy proposal from the competition committee is its aim to disqualify any player who commits two unsportsmanlike-conduct penalties in the same game, but NOT two personal- foul penalties, as had been reported and urged.
The committee also proposes:
❚ To allow coaches in the press box as well as those on the field be allowed to wirelessly send in plays to quarterbacks ( on offence) and defenders.
❚ To make illegal all chop blocks.
❚ To bring the ball out to the 25-yard line instead of the 20 after touchbacks, as in U. S. college football.
❚ To expand the horse-collar rule to include the “name plate” area at the top and back of a ball carrier’s jersey.
❚ To make it a delay-of-game penalty to call timeout when your team has none left.
❚ To make it a loss of down only, not five- yard penalty too, if an eligible receiver touches a pass after re-establishing himself inbounds.
❚ And to eliminate multiple spots of penalty enforcement for a double foul after a change of possession.
At least 75 per cent of owners ( meaning at least 24 of 32) must approve any playing- rules or bylaw change.