NoSaint

To be fair the cooks one looks like a bad call but the jets seemed to be a fumble and yesterday looks incomplete But you can see multiple and non consecutive fingers not under it. He’d have to have a freakish thumb and ring finger to be under the ball, no? Can you show a pic illustrating a reasonable spot his hand could be under it?

But what was the incident? Just one incident? You get what I’m asking.

What is the history on Davis? Seems highly relevant to the debate and I don’t recall the hit(s) prior to this

Dramatic much? If the expectation is they have to be perfect or else all hell breaks lose than of course the issue might be more fans than league. i still don’t get what y’all are arguing is under the ball besides the ground though.

Isnt it only in the pocket? Essentially they are treated as defenseless when looking downfield. As a runner/blocker they can be hit in the head (within same legal bounds as any other player) That puts a lot on suh processing things in the moment. Whether or not you think he did it I have a hard time buying a complex sell in a split second. I’d venture it was just “suh smash” and the rest is us trying to create narratives

Lattimore has been better. That’s not an insult to white. Whites been beyond all expectations and deserves a lot of praise but lattimore has been absolute top notch.

The hot read shouldn’t have been to the center of the defense either. Fade or an out. He checked into a trash read and then forced it in. If you think that that fans will feel happier with refs using more judgement... well... a lot think following the letter of the rule is cheating for the pats. Imagine if we gave actual leeway to make a judgment call there instead.

If a receiver gets the ball while going to the ground it is impossible for him to fumble. Either he holds the ball through the fall or it is incomplete. if you want to argue it’s a bad rule, go ahead. But denying it’s the actual rule is not productive. I see a hand above and the hand beside has pinky and index visible. Is the argument that his middle and ring are underneath and the only thing the call contacts?

He had had a pretty short resume of success. I think there’s a reasonable expectation of him being up and down - plus injury. Plus it seems there may be some disconnect behind the scenes. i think he’s in the to be determined category, but the raiders had to give the deal

Or a rule book ?

So if for only a split second it’s still on his hands - literally fractions of a second- while a knee coincidentally touches... TD? How instantaneous is it that the ball can pause in a players super sticky glove to actually complete possessing it? (Just devils advocate that there isn’t a rule that could be written that perfectly eliminates this feeling some weeks)

It’s always a 30 page thread of shock and awe over the refs not knowing the rule despite the calls being pretty consistent and I’d venture a ton of fans knowing it. to the rest of the post though: how would you change the rule given the opportunity to do so?

You keep saying that last line but it’s simply not true. I encourage you to dig deeper before representing that as the rule.

Agreed romo is great. The bad ones often get the rules wrong. The good ones often teach great shorthand cheats for understanding the rules but neglect the nuance or situational variations leaving us thing we know when we only really know regular occurrences but not the exceptions. Often our longest threads on refs flow back to the differences between those memorable catch phrases vs the rarely occurring variations (football move or all you have to do is break the goal line in this thread, but even phrases like helmet to helmet were a common issue for a stretch with people over applying the phrase)

On your feet, yes. falling, no.

Unfortunately I think you are trying to apply common sense and judgment instead of following the letter of the rule. The rules around catches have become in a lot of ways simplified bright lines to take the refs out of the calls. sideline- you are in or out falling- you basically have to hold it through landing (and practically getting back up) to be safe. There’s no act or moment to seek during what can be complicated tangles of bodies coming down. There’s not much judgment left for the ref. Kept the ball the whole way or lost the ball. When falling the phrase “football move” doesn’t exist in the rule book. You can say it but the ref can’t.

I think the answer varies between those that saw him catch hundreds of balls vs those that only saw pro drops. thats not to say he has a free pass but I suspect that how wide the leeway is on a transition into the league varies with how familiar you are with the guy at his best, not just his worst

That was re-written not long ago to get rid of additional layer of subjectivity. Feet are in or out and the ref isn’t trying to interpret intent or hypothetical outcomes in the moment. Honestly, the catch rules aren’t THAT hard if you take a few minutes to understand the theory flowing through them and accept you aren’t going to write a paragraph or couple billet points to define and govern every single way a ball, player, opponents and the field could possibly interact and make everyone happy

Essentially that’s the expectation when going to the ground. Until you hear a whistle while you have the ball in your hands and still— hold on. Players have lost points by neglecting that and doing things like using the ball to get up or tossing it aside too quickly

I think the controversy on the scoring plays is normally that fans fall on the rule that the play ends immediately on breaking the goal line and neglect what it takes to actually establish possession

Is he going to the ground in that process? You know I respect your opinion on football matters but this one seems obvious so I’m going to be blunt: at what point does he possesses the ball and make a football move before he starts his fall? If you can’t outline that, he has to maintain control all the way through the fall, and his landing.

You have to complete the entire fall there. In a spatial and scientific sense he controlled the motion of the ball but he has to maintain that through the entirety of the fall (not the knee touch or breaking the goal line) to establish possession

Weve seen teams lose points and games on this plenty of times. Typically in the endzone already but it’s the same issue falling into the end zone. It’s always the same back and forth that possession in the endzone is an immediate TD and the refs are terrible vs possession not actually occurring until the fall is fully completed (the rule)

When going to the ground the catch isnt conpleted until you land. If the catch isn’t completed, you aren’t crossing the goal line with possession there. The football move was landing, not reaching while going down.

I just like to check for sure when people throw out those comments.