[biff]

No I don’t but it does seem that the rule was written by lawyers to be interpreted by lawyers.

The ref that was 5’ from the play made the correct call and (I did not spent hours last night watching the analysis of this play on tv) but what I did see was of the same opinion that he had possession and it was not a fumble nor incomplete pass.

[dfwgator]

So you mean to tell me that Butch Johnson’s acrobatic TD catch in Super Bowl XII was a catch, and Dez’s wasn’t?

[kevkrom]

But the call was correctly reversed based on the rule. I don't care how close the on-field official was, the only two elements that matter are 1) did the ball make contact with the ground at any point (yes), and 2) did the receiver maintain complete control of the ball all the way through the ground (no).

The rule is quite clear, and there's no "lawyering" necessary to correctly rule incomplete catch. Don't blame the referee for applying the rule as it's written. (And as noted, the Cowboys have benefitted from this rule in the past.)

I didn't see it live and I don't have a dog in the fight, but I've seen the replay and I know the rule, and I immediately knew it was no catch.

[discostu]

The rule kind of was written by lawyers. Check my link above. All NFL rules are the result of the league trying to make certain plays have certain results. Which is very legalese. In this case there are certain plays they really don’t want to be catches because they really don’t want the instant fumbles that come after them. The ironic part here is that this rule was written to help the offense, and most of the time it does, it prevents the instant (”cheap”) catch-fumble-turnover that they wanted to get rid of, and 99% of the time this rule is enforced it’s good for the offense because it turns a fumble into an incomplete. Yesterday was that 1% (although, arguably, it still hit the goal because if that was a catch that was also a fumble, though he recovered to no harm on that one).