Honestly, this league is becoming a joke with the constant tweaking of these rules, especially this one. Same ref that ruled CJ's an incomplete overrules the call on the field in the JAX/HOU game and gives Walter the TD. http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-game-highlights/09000d5d81c1a58e/Kevin-Walter-18-yard-TD And he uses the "second act" as the reason, the same second act that the league said doesn't exist any more. I don't remember such confusion 20 years ago on what was a legal catch. In fact, it was pretty simple and easily understandable. Can we just go back to two feet down an the ball in your hands?
20 years ago- yeah, it was easier to understand what was a catch and what was not a catch. Since the AFL-NFL merger the late 80s/early 90s was probably the high point. By the late 1990s things got murky (the Bert Emanuel play in the '99 title game really made a mess of things). There were a lot of problems in the 1970s. See the Mel Gray touchdown vs Washington in '75 and the Butch Johnson touchdown in Super Bowl 12. Neither of those plays should have been ruled as touchdowns. Gray had two feet down and the ball in his hands for a split second. He never truly possessed it. The Johnson play was not any better.
I think the problem is that they've constantly tweaked the standard in the last 11 years. The refs have no basis to work from if they're going to change it every damn year. Football move, second act and now the going to the ground rule will all have been changed or completely stricken in the last 3-4 years. There is no way you can maintain consistency in that type of atmosphere.
the problem is replay. the moment you can slow a play down to mili-seconds and have the ability to identify every slight movement of the ball, you have to specify where the catch occurs.
