PLAYING CATCH-UP
ORLANDO, Fla. — The NFL’s 32 owners need to be careful the next few days at The Ritz-Carlton Orlando that they don’t adopt a revised “Catch Rule” that creates as many gray and subjective areas as it eliminates them from the old one.
That is certainly the Competition Committee’s aim in proposing a revised rule at these League Meetings through Wednesday: seeking “simplification and clarification of the rule” by striking in entirety the most confusing clause, the existing “going to the ground” clause that had mandated a receiver ‘survive the ground,’ even on the sideline.
So the new rule would have upheld Steelers tight end Jesse James’ disallowed Week 15 touchdown against the Patriots as a catch. It was called back after he got two feet and one knee down because when he reached the ball across the goal line, it moved as it touched the ground.
Giants receiver Sterling Shepard’s disallowed Week 3 TD in Philadelphia also would have stood under the new language. That was called back despite three feet down in the end zone because when Shepard fell out of bounds on the sideline, the ball came loose at the ground.
But adopting a “less is better” approach to the rule, as NFL executive VP of football operations Troy Vincent said in a Friday conference call, while encouraging isn’t enough. What the NFL needs is a reasonable enough process that its players, coaches, GMs and fans aren’t watching every interminable review basically needing to flip a coin to figure out whether the official is going to announce it’s a catch or not.
The best way to ensure consistency, of course, is to get this rule right once and for all, because nothing threatens the people’s understanding of the games they’re watching more than constant rules adjustments to them. So here’s what the Competition Committee, which includes Giants president John Mara, proposes in the new rule — that a catch be defined by when a player:
a. secures control of the ball in his hands or arms, prior to the ball touching the ground, and
b. touches the ground inbounds with both feet or with any part of his body other than his hands, and
c. after a. and b. have been fulfilled, performs any act common to the game (e.g., tuck the ball away, extend it towards or over the goal line or the line to gain, take an additional step, turn upfield, or avoid or ward off an opponent), or he maintains control of the ball long enough to do so. A new note also broadens the definition of a player’s “control” of the ball to be more lenient, specifically by eliminating the word “slight” from the description of what ball movement results in loss of control that had created confusion, said Vincent and Rich McKay, the Atlanta Falcons’ president and CEO and Competition Committee Chairman.
“Movement of the ball does not automatically result in loss of control,” the new note reads.
And finally, the only mention of the ground defining a catch appears to refer to diving catches, in which a player doesn’t have the time to establish himself in possession and loses the ball in the act of still trying to secure it.
“If a player, who satisfied (a) and (b), but has not satisfied (c), contacts the ground and loses control of the ball, it is an incomplete pass if the ball hits the ground before he regains control, or if he regains control out of bounds,” it says.
I like a lot of the new language’s simplicity, and I think it will result in more catches than being overturned to incompletions, though the committee acknowledges a side-effect could be turning some incompletions under the old rule into fumbles under the new rule (they plan to show owners an example of such a play in an Arizona Cardinals game).
What I don’t like, though, is the arbitrary language in Clause C that says if a receiver doesn’t perform a common football act, an official still could rule it a completion if “he maintains control of the ball long enough to do so.”
How long is “long enough”? In my mind, it is a subjective determination and could create confusion and the same type of inconsistent enforcement from game-to-game that threatens the credibility and soundness of the rule and league.
Also, though the Committee, which includes Steelers coach Mike Tomlin and Saints coach Sean Payton, almost completely rewrote the rule, it unnerves me slightly that they worked off the old rule — crossing out old language and writing new verbiage into the existing document. Commissioner Roger Goodell had said he felt it was prudent to start from scratch at his Jan. 31 Super Bowl press conference in Minneapolis.
“Because I think when you add or subtract things it can lead to confusion,” Goodell said then. “You have to look at what the unintended consequences are of making a change.”
Vincent on Friday admitted the years-long process “started with the actual current rule” and then when different interpretations reflected points of confusion, they brought in more videos and voices and flipped the question to, ‘Would you like this to be a catch?’ And then they began writing language to match the answers.”
This of course feels all so absurd, spending all this time on the definition of a catch when it often feels like you could get any kid at your local playground to tell you what it means to complete a pass. But that should tell you: this is how large a problem the inconsistency of the Catch Rule has become.
At least they’re working to fix it. Now it’s up to the owners to knock off any remaining subjective determinations from the committee’s proposal and then get to the business of educating everyone on what the words actually mean when we tune in on Sundays next fall.
The full committee, by the way, includes McKay (chairman), Mara, Cowboys owner Stephen Jones, Packers president Mark Murphy, Ravens GM Ozzie Newsome, Broncos GM John Elway, Tomlin and Payton.
LOGIC PREVAILS
NFL teams and head coaching candidates no longer will have to wait until the coach’s current team’s postseason run is over before signing a contract if the owners pass ‘Resolution G-4.’ This past January, for example, the Giants received permission from Minnesota to interview Vikings offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur and came to a verbal agreement but couldn’t officially sign him to a contract until after the Vikes had been eliminated from the playoffs. Under the new rule, they could have completed contract negotiations and even announced Shurmur’s signing publicly while the Vikings were still playing. The coach, of course, still would be “prohibited from commencing duties with the hiring club until the employer club’s current season has concluded.” But McKay admitted this rule should have been changed years ago, and Patriots OC Josh McDaniels’ decommitment from the Indianapolis Colts this past winter is a prime example of how the coaching carousel can backfire when clubs and coaches can’t make it official early.
GET YOUR KICKS
McKay confirmed that there has been discussion of eliminating kickoffs entirely for player safety reasons, though there is no rule change on the table regarding it … Another rule proposal would give NFL senior VP of officiating Al Riveron the authority to eject players from the league’s officiating headquarters in New York if he “determines that a foul on a non-football act on the field is flagrant.” McKay said the NFL’s officials actually proposed this change because sometimes with “a fight or a dead-ball situation,” for example, “they are at a loss to capture what exactly happened and the right numbers.”... Owners also will review a proposal submitted by the Jets to change the enforcement of defensive pass interference penalties from a spot foul to a 15yard penalty “unless the foul is determined to be intentional and egregious by the officiating crew”... And the Committee is proposing a rational rule that if a team scores a winning touchdown at the end of regulation, it will not be required to kick a meaningless extra point or go for two. McKay, funny enough, didn’t remember why the rule existed in the first place but posited it was for one of two reasons: “It (was) either the betting line or it was the tiebreakers and the fact that net points used to play a really big part in the tiebreakers. Now it’s number 10 in our tiebreakers.”
WHAT MARA SAYS WILL SAY IT ALL
Giants GM Dave Gettleman’s trade of Jason Pierre-Paul was a major shakeup and a shipment of a prominent player out of town, and Mara on Sunday will have his first opportunity since hiring Shurmur in late January to speak publicly on his franchise’s direction, Odell Beckham Jr.’s controversial video and future with the club, and preparations holding the No. 2 overall pick in April’s draft. Mara is the face and voice of the organization, and his comments on the ongoing roster purge could shed critical light on how much further Gettleman intends to go to change his team’s dynamic. But Mara, above all, was tepid at best the last time he publicly discussed Beckham in January, saying he wanted him to meet Shurmur to discuss how to “act” under the new regime. In training camp last year he had made it sound like ‘when’ Beckham would get a big contract extension, not ‘if.’ What he says will define how the Giants feel about OBJ.