NFL Week 16: So we were talking about rules

First NFL game I ever attended. It was on a press pass:

Some dufus asked Bill Belichick in the postgame press conference a long-winded question that basically culminated in, Have you ever been part of a game where someone returned two kicks for a TD? The question probably took at least 30 seconds, maybe more.

Belichick: "No."

 

Just for the symmetry of it all, I want to see the Bears lose to the Browns.

 

Threadjacking the trip down memory lane with actual news ...

Packers QB Aaron Rodgers done for season, put on IR

 

Those are some outstanding negative stats. Thanks for citing them.

 

The weird thing about the "catch rule":
A - The ground can't cause a fumble.
B - You need two feet down and control of the ball for a catch.
C - When a player "holds the ball" over the goal line and it gets knocked away - it's still a touchdown.

And yet all of these happened on that play in Pittsburgh and it wasn't a catch. It seems if you follow the basic tenets of these things, the catch rule becomes a lot simpler.

 

Plus, one knee equals two feet and James had control of the ball when his knee hit at the 1 before he stretched the ball over the goal line. Therefore, he should have become a runner at that point, correct? And him lunging for the goal line was his "football move." And if that's the case, then the instant the ball crosses the goal line it's a touchdown and it bobbling a micrometer when it hit the ground a foot deep into the end zone should not have mattered.
This was one of those cases, I think, where the nuances of the rule contradict themselves.

 

The ground can cause a fumble when you are not touched.
The catch is not deemed completed if the player is going to the ground until he survives contact with the ground.
It's still 2 feet and possession along the sideline.

 

I just posted on the Week 15 thread about Max Kellerman ranting this exact argument. My understanding is what JC posted. "Surviving the ground" takes precedence and that is why it was incomplete.

This crap drives me nuts because I thought it was the right call the moment they reversed it and y'all are making me doubt. I'm fine blaming James for trying to do too much rather than just securing the damn catch and leaving it at that. (To be honest, I can't tell where exactly he would have landed if he didn't reach out or if he'd have had time to reach it over after landing, untouched. Probably would have been second-and-goal inside the one with 28 seconds remaining.

 

Thomas Davis suspension reduced to one game.

 

Well, it's not like he dove to deliver a a forearm to the back of the head of a player who was lying on the ground well after the whistle. Nah. That's what Gronkowski did and that was a one-game suspension, without the fake show of starting it at two and reducing it.

 

I always thought "surviving the ground" was trying to solve a problem that didn't exist, and I don't think the world would end if that part of the definition was eliminated. I don't have the play committed to memory, but didn't Dez Bryant take two or three steps before all hell broke loose?

 

I believe it was three, but it's tough to tell if he had control yet when the foot left the ground on the first step. It is different from the James catch in that James seemed to make a football move. In both cases, it is kind of tough to tell if the ball ever touched the ground, which made the reversals tougher for fans to swallow.