What defines a catch in the NFL?
That is a question that has been very confusing over the last several years and now with a new rule change, the league hopes to clear a lot of things up. Under the new rules, the league is tweaking the slight movement of the football in a receiver's hands and the going-to-the-ground requirement.
"We worked backward," executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent said to the Washington Post. "We looked at plays and said: Do you want that to be a catch? And then we applied that to the rule. Slight movement of the ball, it looks like we'll reverse that. Going to the ground, it looks like that's going to be eliminated. And we'll go back to the old replay standard of reverse the call on the field only when it's indisputable."
The plan is for this change to be presented to the owners at the league meetings next week.
The new rule will require that a receiver have control of the ball and any slight movement would not result in an incompletion.
"The Dez Bryant play, that'd be a catch," Vincent said. "The Jesse James play, that'd be a catch."
The Patriots benefited from this old rule, as they would have lost to the Steelers in Week 14 if James' play wasn't overturned.
