Cowboys VP: We Still Got Some Work to Do on Catch Rules

Stephen Jones recently said officials made the right call on Dez Bryant's non-catch in the playoffs last year

Last week executive vice president and COO Stephen Jones became the first member of the Dallas Cowboys organization to come out and say that officials made the right call on Dez Bryant’s now-infamous non-catch in the Divisional Round of the playoffs in Green Bay last year.

Not long after that statement, though, Jones told the Talk of Fame Network that the Competition Committe, of which he is a member, has more work to do where that particular section of the rulebook is concerned. The league changed the language of the rule this offseason in response to Dez’s non-catch, but kept the basic substance--the part that keeps common sense far away from determinations of what is and isn’t a catch in the NFL, and relies instead on a series of insufferably detailed checkpoints from the time a player touches the ball to the time he hits the ground.

I think the same fury will be there,” Jones said, per the Dallas Morning News. “You can say they clarified it somewhat. Until we figure out as a committee how to write it; especially these really special athletes like Calvin Johnson, a player like Dez Bryant that can make these super human type of acrobatic catches, until we account for that, we’re going to continue to have these issues. ... The bottom line: if a receiver is in the air and he is going to the ground, then it’s not a catch. I think they ruled in Dez’s case, even though he took two or three steps, got a hand down, and, what I thought was a football move when he reached for the goal line; until you’re really able to clarify the difference in that and a player going in there high and catching it then landing on the ground and the ball coming out we’re going to continue to have people discuss this.

“[They’ll] have furor, have emotion until we get it right. In my mind, we still got some work to do.”

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