Without ceremony or even so much as notation, the end of the Super Bowl reliably launches the longest offseason in sports, a solid seven months between NFL games that matter.
Major League Baseball goes dark only five months, the NBA barely four, and as for hockey, the NHL’s offseason and the Fourth of July weekend seem of the approximate same length.
But despite its relatively luxuriant downtime, the NFL can virtually guarantee you that the game will return in September with no more idea of what a catch is than it “possessed” last week, which was no idea whatsoever.
Eagles were catching footballs all over the slippery surface of whatever they happen to be calling Arizona’s stadium on the way to losing Super Bowl LVII, but the league’s on field adjudicators in conjunction with its ever-expanding replay-bureaucracy got lost in more than enough technological handwringing to turn the league’s biggest show into an international embarrassment.
Here’s a suggestion that could easily displace the league’s rules and accompanying notes on when someone has caught the football.
When a player gets to the goal line or the sideline in possession of the ball, the play is over. He shouldn't have to "control" it until he teeters, falls, rolls over, swaddles it in bubble wrap, gets interviewed on the postgame show, and changes into his street clothes.
Even that probably wouldn’t prevent the referee from turning on a stadium mic next fall and announcing, “After further review, the receiver failed to swaddle, causing consternation; the call on the field is overturned. It’s fourth down.”
Instead, the league has been folding the simple athletic act of catching the football into some kind of crepuscular origami, to which the only legitimate response is the kind of super slow motion frame-by-frame analysis not necessary since the Zapruder film.
As Dennis Miller once said during a “Monday Night Football” replay review, “Yeah, but we were at a football game, and now we’re at an autopsy.”
We reached peak absurdity on this almost 10 years ago, when Dez Bryant caught a game-winning touchdown pass enabling Dallas to beat Green Bay in a playoff game, lost control as crossed the goal line, but caught it again before the ball touched the ground.
No catch.
Three years later, Pittsburgh’s Jesse James scored on a pass play in the final seconds to beat New England at Heinz Field, but, in the infamous post-further-review words of the referee, “did not survive the ground.”
That was five years ago, and the league is no closer to knowing what a catch is than in December 2017.
Many of the game’s serious students blame the rule and its accompanying notes, which aren’t terribly clear but are subject to dubious inference.
To quote the rule:
A player who makes a catch may advance the ball. A forward pass is complete (by the offense) or intercepted (by the defense) in the field of play, at the sideline, or in the end zone if a player, who is inbounds:
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 forward, 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.
There’s plenty of wiggle room there, even if wiggling isn’t listed as an “act common to the game,” never mind the celebrations, and such. But it’s in the notes where imponderabilia reigns.
To quote the notes:
Movement of the ball does not automatically result in a loss of control.
(Um, Jesse James would like a word).
If a pass is caught simultaneously by two eligible opponents, and both players retain it, the ball belongs to the passers.
(What?!)
If a player who is in possession of the ball is held up and carried out of bounds by an opponent before both feet or any part of his body other than his hands touches the ground inbounds, it is a completed or intercepted pass. It is not necessary for the player to maintain the ball when he lands out of bounds.
(But you just said ... )
While none of that should instill any confidence that the league will eventually know what a catch is, the problem isn’t in the rule or the notes; the problem is replay.
As Mike Tomlin said after the Jesse James robbery, “It’s really irrelevant how I feel about it, to be honest. It’s not gonna change the outcome. I’m not gonna cry over spilled milk and all of that crap and talk about replay. I ain’t doin’ it.”
I thought, as I listened to him that night, the same way I feel today: Death to replay.
As a viable broadcast technology, instant replay has been around for 60 years, most of it to enrich the television experience rather than impact the game. In its early years, it was benignly confusing, as when my grandmother used to say, “See that? They threw it to the same guy, and he did the same damn thing again!”
Unfortunately, the NFL and the other sports have allowed replay to ruin the officiating, interrupt the flow of the games, and too often, in the biggest moments, cause as much controversy as it purports to eliminate.
At some point in our general devolvement, some folks who “hate to lose” got it in their wrong-headed principles that umpires and officials are not allowed to make mistakes. Never mind that every game turns on a series of mistakes by everyone else on the field. Mistakes happen. That’s life. Get over it.
And always remember, the ground can’t cause a fumble, but it can cause an incompletion, especially by a player who fails to maintain control or to survive the ground while failing to swaddle.
Gene Collier: gcollier@post-gazette.com and Twitter: @genecollier.
First Published: February 19, 2023, 10:30 a.m.
