Bengals tight end Tyler Eifert appeared to score a touchdown just before halftime Sunday against the Ravens, only to have a replay review rule that he hadn’t caught the pass. NFL head of officiating Dean Blandino says the replay review was correct, and Eifert didn’t hold onto the ball.
Blandino invoked the Dez Bryant Rule on NFL Network, saying that Eifert didn’t possess the ball for long enough to constitute a catch.
“Very similar to the Dez play, he’s not a runner before he went to the ground, and the requirement is he has to hold onto the ball. So regardless of any reach, he’s got to hold onto the ball when he lands, and there’s an element of time the receiver has to complete in order to complete a catch. He didn’t complete that element of time and, very similar to the Dez play, it was ruled incomplete,” Blandino said.
Some of us have a hard time understanding that ruling, as Eifert had the ball long enough to reach it over the goal line, which would seem to be something you couldn’t do with a football that you hadn’t caught. But Blandino said that Eifert reaching the ball forward doesn’t constitute a “football move” that would mean he had completed the catch.
So Eifert lost what appeared to be a touchdown catch. Fortunately for the Bengals, unlike the Cowboys when the Dez Bryant Rule was invoked, they still won the game.