Falcons receiver Julio Jones caught it. Unless he didn’t.
The ruling in Philadelphia was that he didn’t. And the second ruling in New York was the right one.
Setting aside for now whether the officials properly concluded that the Falcons receiver failed to secure what would have been a 52-yard gain in Thursday night’s opener against the Eagles, NFL senior V.P. of officiating Al Riveron properly applied the replay standard when considering, in response to a challenge from Falcons coach Dan Quinn, whether a mistake had been made.
In a frame-by-frame review of the super-slow motion video, it looked like Jones secured the catch. But no angle provided clear and obvious evidence that Jones had made the catch. Or, to apply the more colorful standard, 50 drunks in a bar wouldn’t have shouted in unison that a mistake had been made.
As a league source acknowledged on Friday, the ruling on the field would have stood regardless of whether the ruling was catch or no catch. Just as there was no clear and obvious evidence that Jones did catch it, there was no clear and obvious that Jones didn’t.
And that’s the way the replay standard should be applied. It wasn’t applied that way last year, with Riveron on multiple occasions ignoring the rules and attempting to fashion a ruling based on what he saw -- or what he thought he saw -- from the remote confines of 345 Park Avenue.
The shift arrived most notably during Super Bowl XLII, when a pair of key touchdown catches by the Eagles were upheld via replay review. In Thursday night’s game, the biggest play that wasn’t also fell in favor of the Eagles, with the Falcons not picking up more than half the length of the field because Riveron opted not to attempt to replace the judgment of the officials with his own.
Last night, the new, and correct, approach to replay didn’t only benefit the Eagles. A catch in the first half by Falcons tight end Austin Hooper seemed to be incomplete after the ball seemed to not just move but to end up flat on the ground under Hooper. But the 50-drunks-in-a-bar bar wasn’t met, and the ruling on the field stood.
And while this approach may require coaches, players, media, and fans to tolerate periodic mistakes by officials, replay doesn’t attempt to correct mistakes. It attempts to correct clear mistakes only.