On Tuesday, the NFL made a long awaited move to simplify the catch rule. This will hopefully reduce the number of ridiculously subjective calls and tense, over-long replays where the only rule that seemed to really apply was that if you thought something was a catch then it probably wasn’t.
Plenty of teams have been victimized by questionable calls based on the old rule and the Carolina Panthers are no strangers to the spotlight. Jerricho Cotchery’s first quarter catch in Super Bowl 50 was inexplicably called an incompletion and helped set the tone for a game where the Panthers couldn’t catch a break against any of their opponents.