mattyg55 said:
the rules and penalties go hand in hand, break a rule, get a penalty. and like i said before, they're making these rules to take the judgement calls out of the equation..does anyone think that dez bryant didnt make that catch last year or megatron a few years back when he used the ball to get up in the endzone, and that rule is the same,,its black and white and my guess is it wont change
The 'batting' rule has a judgement call BUILT-IN as it is...even Mike Pereira said that he saw the ref reach for his flag then pull his hand away, stating that it appeared he made a judgement call with respect to 'intent'...so the "rule" is fundamentally flawed to begin with. The ref was prolly on a SEA teaser and couldn't bring himself to do it..
The fundamental problem which we've talked about before, is that EVERYTHING - MOST ESPECIALLY critical calls like this should be reviewable WITHOUT EXCEPTION via coaches red flag. This 'non-reviewable call' stuff is absolute horseshit. If the DET staff was 'in-the-know' about the rule they could have radioed down to throw the red flag; after reviewing, intent to knock the ball out the back of the endzone would have clearly been established and it would have been DET ball 1st & inches.
That said, I stand behind my original statement 100% that it should be categorically dismissed as an uncatchable ball would. And, with the catch-all red flag change as mentioned above, the other team could CHALLENGE intent via a slow-mo replay if their player was in a position to potentially make a play on the ball..