Washington coach Jay Gruden wasn’t happy with the referee or the league office after his team lost what looked like an interception on Sunday against the Giants.
Gruden said everyone who has looked at the replay has told him that safety David Bruton picked off an Eli Manning pass in the end zone, but the officials ruled that Bruton did not possess the ball inbounds.
“Everybody says it was an interception except for the replay guy,” Gruden said. “I don’t know what the rule is. We’ve just got to live by it. I thought his elbow was down, I thought his butt was down, I thought he had control of the ball. I thought it was a clear challengeable play, it just didn’t work out for us. I don’t know what a catch is anymore. I don’t know if anybody does. We just are at the mercy of the result. I thought I could have maybe challenged the one Josh [Norman] stripped on Odell [Beckham] too. That was close. I was afraid. You know, you’ve just got to take the information that is given to you from upstairs or what you see on the replay and make a decision and hope for the best, but it didn’t work out for us.”
Gruden’s complaint is a common one, and one that we may just be stuck with in the NFL: No one knows what constitutes a catch.