NFL 2012 Season Week 10 Picks

Firsties! Bump!

They should just quit forcing Thursday night games... besides Thanksgiving.

Last night was terrible.

Also, the regular refs sucks just as much as the replacements, but no one is saying anything about that.

the problem with the replacement refs wasn't just because they made bad calls (I think they generally made more bad calls than the regular refs). Real refs make bad calls all the time, too. The frustrating thing about the replacement refs was the incompetence on everything from where to spot the football, where to walk off a penalty from, when the clock should start or stop, getting the ball spotted in a reasonable amount of time after a routine play, calling penalties on every play, forgetting how many timeouts a team has, not charging teams a timeout when one should have been charged, granting additional replay challenges to teams that have no timeouts left, etc etc. There was nothing more frustrating than watching the Packers attempt to be a fast paced, no huddle offense, and then between each play there would be a 30 second discussion about where the ball should be spotted. Most of those problems have all by dried up since the regular refs starting reffing again.

That being said, I guess I'm still not clear on the "going to the ground while making a catch" rule. Last night, a Jax receiver made a nice catch, hauled the ball in, and while stumbling got THREE feet down before hitting the ground out of bounds and loosing the football. The Colts challenged it and the ruling was overturned to incompletion. After watching last night, I guess then that the "going to the ground" part is a potentially indefinite process. Conceivably, some guy could make a spectacular, leaping catch at the 20 yard line, and be stumbling to catch his balance on the way to the endzone and after he gets to the endzone gives up, falls, and loses the ball. It would appear that since the "act of going to ground" was continued for 20 yards, the receiver never technically established possession therefore it is an incomplete pass.* To me, that seems to be what the ruling indicated last night. Jax receiver made a leaping catch, and in attempting to catch his balance got three feet down before finally hitting the ground and losing the football. Is there ever a moment when the "act of making the catch" is finished even if the "going to the ground" process is still under way?

*obviously this is a somewhat extreme hyopthetical situation and I'm not trying to a light a fire here. My point is that if I was under the impression that there was a threshold where "going to the ground" can continue irrespective of the "process of the catch" being completed, and thus possession is now established, I thought last night's example would have been it. Because the difference between what I saw last night and the silly extreme examples of a guy stumbling for 20 yards seems like somewhat of a grey line.

You wouldn't understand because you Brits don't allow catching the ball on offense in your version of football.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey

Gray is the preferred American spelling, although grey is an accepted variant

I didn't see the play but I would guess you would have to demonstrate that you're under control in your struggle with gravity, so, in your example above I would think that no, that would not be. Though maybe when extended out that long you would indeed demonstrate you're more in control than just falling with style.

If you could score points by almost scoring points on big plays, the Vikings would really be a force to be reckoned with. Then again, if you could score points for that, the big plays would probably finish just outside of where ever that area is. They have to be leading the world over the last few years in plays of 30 yards or more that get 98% of the available yardage without actually winding up a touchdown.

Week 10 and i finally get my trophy!!!

Congrats! Hopefully you can win more in the upcoming weeks and challenge me for most wins :)