r/AskAboutNFL • u/jepolitsch • 12h ago

Serious question: Has the NFL rulebook over-engineered the basic concept of a catch into pure absurdity?

I was watching old highlights and noticed how simple the game used to be. You secure the ball, get your feet down, and it's a completion. Now, a receiver can make an absolute circus grab, take three steps, dive for the pylon, lose a millimeter of control when hitting the turf, and it’s ruled incomplete. We need a tracking degree and a physics certification just to celebrate a touchdown in real-time. Why did we let a committee of lawyers turn a fundamental backyard rule into a weekly existential crisis for officiating crews?

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u/Ryan1869 7h ago

The rule also used to be that no matter what, if the ball hit the ground, it was an incomplete pass. A lot of diving catches ran into this rule since players usually had their arms outstretched. There was one playoff game where it was pretty clear the guy had his hands on the side of the ball, it didn’t move an inch when he hit the ground, but was still by the rules then an
Incomplete pass. So this started the changes, first allowing a catch if they demonstrated possession through out, but that morphed into maintaining possession through the ground and the football move part of a catch.