The catch rule has become a problem for the NFL, all over again. And it could (if not should) become a topic for discussion in the looming offseason conversations regarding potential tweaks to the rules.
At least one head coach plans to advocate for a careful examination of the various controversial catch rulings from the 2025 season, with the goal of asking questions and obtaining clarity as to what is and isn’t a catch.
There are three current problems with the catch rule, in our view.
First, the league focuses too heavily on taking a third step to complete the process of making a catch. Even though the rulebook expressly lists other ways to perform an “act common to the game” (extend the ball forward, take an additional step, avoid or ward off an opponent, or have possession long enough to do any of those things) after securing possession and getting both feet down, the league has inexplicably made the third act all about taking a third step.
Second, the league created two different standards in defending controversial rulings from key games. On December 7, an interception in the Steelers-Ravens game was reversed to a catch by Aaron Rodgers based on reasoning (as articulated by NFL V.P. of instant replay Mark Butterworth) that cannot be reconciled with the failure to do a full replay review (presumably involving Butterworth) of the key overtime interception in the Bills-Broncos playoff game.
Said Butterworth in a pool report regarding the Rodgers catch: “The offensive player had control of the ball and as he was going to the ground, there was a hand in there, but he never lost control of the ball and then his knees hit the ground in control. So therefore, by rule, he is down by contact with control of the ball.”
Here’s the real issue that needs to be resolved, even if it means that the league has no choice but to admit that one of the two rulings was wrong — does the requirement to maintain possession when going to the ground not apply if a player is down by contact with possession of the ball? Under the Butterworth standard, it doesn’t. Under the outcome of the Bills-Broncos play, it does.
Third, and this one is broader than the catch rule: How does replay work? Who makes the decision(s)? And what is the standard for activating a full-blown review, in lieu of the “Orwellian” involvement of expedited replay assistance?
The threshold question is whether the league cares enough to spend the time and effort necessary to raise and resolve these issues. It should. The integrity of the game resides in the margins, and the most critical line the NFL must clearly draw relates to when, where, and how a catch has, or hasn’t, been made.
Mike Pereira has spent decades working as an on-field official, then as the NFL’s supervisor of officials, then as an officiating analyst for Fox. And he thinks it’s time for the NFL to make a major change to the way it employs referees.
Pereira says that the 17 referees, who lead each of the NFL’s officiating crews, should be full-time employees who work all week on the job, located in one office where they’re meeting in person to ensure consistency in their understanding of rules and game management.
“I think it’s time to look at full-time officials,” Pereira told the Charlotte Observer. “Not everyone. But I do believe that the person that represents the crew in the field, the guy in the white hat, the referee — I think those 17 people should be full-time working together all year. Not going home in between games, but going to an officiating institute and breaking down all the games together, so the messages are consistent. . . . I’m not a fan of making everyone full-time, but make the referees full-time. To me, it’s time for that.”
Pereira made his comments before the divisional round of the playoffs, so he was not reacting to some of the controversial calls coming out of the weekend. Instead, he was taking a broader view, based on his wealth of experience working in officiating.
Most NFL referees have full-time jobs elsewhere and spend more time on their other careers than they do on refereeing. The NFL has resisted making refs full-time employees primarily because that would cost the league more money. But the man who was once in charge of overseeing those refs thinks it’s money the NFL needs to spend.
Sunday’s appearance by NFL officiating spokesman Walt Anderson on the NFL Network pregame show was must-see TV.
And it raised more than a few must-answer questions.
Beyond the obvious (who specifically decided that the controversial interception from Saturday’s Bills-Broncos game didn’t require a full-blown replay review?) another comment from the league’s exclusive rules-explainer caught the attention of the league’s teams.
“They have an officiating staff of instant-replay officials,” Anderson said in explaining the behind-the-scenes process that resulted in a confirmation of the ruling on the field. “They have multiple people at the same time reviewing, really, every play.”
Said a high-level executive from one of the NFL’s teams to PFT: “Explain this to me. Entire staff of replay officials? Who are these people? Why is the first time we are hearing about this entire staff of replay officials?”
As explained on Sunday, the replay process was centralized more than a decade ago to create consistency. It was designed for former NFL senior V.P. of officiating Dean Blandino. And then Blandino left for Fox.
The job initially went to Al Riveron. After Riveron left (voluntarily or otherwise), it became much murkier. No one knows who’s making the decision, when a formal review occurs. And no one knows who’s making the decision when an expedited review occurs that a full-blown review isn’t needed.
Now, teams are learning there’s a full staff of unknown individuals who are making these critical decisions.
By not having one person and only one person making these decisions (especially in high-profile, standalone games), no one is ever truly accountable for the result. It is, as Kyle Brandt said during the NFL Network pregame show, “Orwellian.”
Big Shield (Brother) probably didn’t appreciate the choice of words. That doesn’t make it any less accurate.
At a time when the tinfoil-hat crowd has turned into a full-blown, gambling-fueled Reynolds Wrap Army, the current system cries out for an overhaul. The fact that the wagon-circling from Walt Anderson has caused teams to say, basically, “What the hell is going on?” only highlights that point.
The league would prefer that we focus on the next bright, shiny object. Those who truly care about the integrity of the game of professional football would prefer that the league office get its act together regarding a procedure that has massive consequences for teams, players, fans, and — as Sean McDermott found out on Monday — coaches.
The first-quarter interception that sparked the Rams’ first touchdown drive of the playoff game in Chicago included a missed call that would have wiped out the turnover.
Rams defensive tackle Kobie Turner struck Williams in the head after the threw the ball. The rules prohibit a forcible blow to the head of the passer.
During the broadcast, NBC rules analyst Terry McAulay expressed a belief that a flag should have been thrown for roughing the passer.
Roughing isn’t subject to replay review. As more and more plays are, the ones that aren’t become more and more glaring. Hopefully, the NFL eventually will make all non-subjective calls subject to replay review — with full transparency as to the process of deciding whether a play or or isn’t overturned.
The game-changing ruling in the Bills-Broncos playoff game got short shrift at the time. It has since become the most dominant topic of discussion in the entire sport.
The folks at NFL Network, which is owned and operated by the league, repeatedly made that point during Sunday morning’s show. The critical decision that Buffalo receiver Brandin Cooks failed to complete the process of catching the ball and Denver cornerback Ja’Quan McMillian intercepted it happened too quickly, with no explanation from referee Carl Cheffers as to the ruling on the field and/or any review of it.
During his weekly appearance on the NFL Network Sunday pregame show, NFL officiating spokesman Walt Anderson went through the reasoning that resulted in the play being not a catch but an interception. The ball, as Anderson explained it, immediately came loose when Cooks hit the ground and ended up in the control of McMillian.
Anderson said that both the replay assistant in the stadium “and New York” reviewed the ruling on the field of an interception.
Steve Mariucci pressed Anderson on one key point: “Who made the call?”
Anderson said that, in the league office, there’s an entire staff of instant-replay officials, with “multiple people at the same time reviewing every play.” Anderson pointed to the “millions of dollars” the NFL has invested in the Hawk-Eye camera system, so that they can look at all angles, talk to each other, and confirm the call on the field.
To his credit, Mariucci kept pushing Anderson. Why, Mariucci asked, didn’t referee Carl Cheffers explain the situation to the millions who were watching the game?
Anderson said that, even without a full-blown replay review, every play is being reviewed by multiple people. “If you can confirm the ruling on the field was correct, they want to move the game along,” Anderson said.
Anderson then added that CBS did a good job of explaining the situation to the audience. Mariucci quipped that he doesn’t want to hear about it from Tony Romo.
“I think Carl should have done that,” Mariucci said.
And then Colleen Wolfe said “more transparency would be good.” She’s absolutely right.
We’ve been saying for years that there should be public access to the replay-review process, whether during a quick look or a full-blown review. We need to see what they’re seeing, and to hear what they’re saying The current process, as Kyle Brandt said earlier in the show, feels “Orwellian.”
That was the risk of exporting replay review from the stadium (where the referee made the replay decisions) to the league office. At the time, we were led to believe Dean Blandino would be making all replay-reviews decisions. And maybe he would have been, if he hadn’t left for Fox because, as Blandino later said, the NFL doesn’t properly “value the position.”
Now, there’s apparently no one person whose name is on these decisions. Combining that with zero transparency creates natural curiosity regarding how and why such an important decision was made — and why it all seemed to be so rushed.
It’s one thing to move along a regular-season game that started in the cluster of 1:00 p.m. ET kickoffs. It’s quite another to slip the engine into overdrive when so much is riding on the outcome.
That’s separate from whether the call was right (there was no effort to reconcile the decision with the Week 14 Steelers-Ravens play that started as an interception and ended via replay review as a catch by Aaron Rodgers). Instead of having Gene Steratore interpret the video evidence for CBS, we should have heard about it from the people who were making the decision, while they were making it.
For starters, it would help tremendously to know who exactly is making these decisions. We still don’t.
From the official rulebook: “All Replay Reviews will be conducted by the Senior Vice President of Officiating or his or her designee.” As explained last month in the aftermath of the crazy backwards-pass, two-point replay ruling in Rams-Seahawks, we don’t even know who the current Senior V.P. of Officiating is.
And we definitely don’t know who his or her specific designee was for one of the most important rulings of the entire 2025 season. At a bare minimum, we should.
In his usual postgame press conference, Bills coach Sean McDermott expressed concern about the process used to uphold a critical overtime interception ruling that likely decided the playoff game between Buffalo and Denver. Then, something unusual happened.
McDermott had more to say. Specifically, McDermott called Jay Skurski of the Buffalo News from the team plane. Here’s the full transcript of a rare coach’s pool report, as forward to PFT by Skurski.
“That play is not even close. That’s a catch all the way. I sat in my locker and I looked at it probably 20 times, and nobody can convince me that that ball is not caught and in possession of Buffalo. I just have no idea how the NFL handed it, in particular, the way that they did. I think the players and the fans deserve an explanation, you know?”
“That play is not even close. That’s a catch all the way. I sat in my locker and I looked at it probably 20 times, and nobody can convince me that that ball is not caught and in possession of Buffalo. I just have no idea how the NFL handed it, in particular, the way that they did. I think the players and the fans deserve an explanation, you know?”
Q: “Did you read the pool report?”
“Yeah, [Bills P.R. chief Derek Boyko] sent it to me. I just got it. I wish I would have gotten it before my press conference.”
Q: “Is there any recourse here for you? What can you do?”
“Here’s the deal, right? The fans deserve more. The players certainly deserve more. They deserve an explanation, and it’s a shame that a game is decided on a call like that, and there is no time spent with the head official going underneath the hood or to the replay booth, right? To the monitor. I don’t understand how that works. I don’t understand how that could be the case when it’s such a close play, so basically there is one person ruling on that play or, only New York ruling on that play? I don’t agree with that. If that’s the case, I don’t agree with that -- that that is the best approach to decide a game like that.”
Q: “You’ve always been cautious about commenting on officiating. Why do you feel in this situation that it is so important to share how you feel about it?”
“Because I only speak up when there is a wrong. In this case, it happened to be to our team. We win with class and we lose with class in Buffalo. That’s how we handle our business, but when I’m looking at the replay myself and I’m being objective and I’m saying, ‘you can not convince me that that was not a catch, Buffalo possession, ball at the 20. You can’t convince [me].’ I’m speaking up because I feel strongly that that was a catch and that possession should have been ball belongs to Buffalo. I can’t agree with their assessment of a change of possession or whatever the statement was. I can’t agree with that. We’re not just going to sit here and take it, is what I’m saying. We’re not just going to sit here and take it. I’m pissed off about it, and I feel strongly as I’ve looked at it in review in my own locker that it’s a catch, possession Buffalo, and that the process should have been [long pause] ... handled differently. I don’t understand why the head official who is at the game does not get a chance to look at the same thing people in New York are ruling on.”
McDermott may or may not be accurate regarding his interpretation of the play itself. (Under the standard the NFL applied and defended to overturn the same outcome and make it a catch by Aaron Rodgers in the Week 14 Steelers-Ravens regular-season game, McDermott is absolutely right.) The broader question — especially in an age of legalized, normalized, and heavily monetized gambling — is whether there should have been a more deliberate and transparent process for reviewing such an important play.
Apparently, there was an expedited review. Not a full and formal review. (There’s no mention in the official NFL game book of any review of the play.) Given that the replay assistant or the league office can perform an expedited review, it’s impossible to know who made such an important decision, unless the NFL tells us.
It goes back to the basic construction of the current replay-review process. The goal, more than a decade ago, was to ensure consistency in the application of the rules and the relevant standard by taking the final say from the referees and centralizing it in New York. And if NFL V.P. of instant replay Mark Butterworth — who explained the Rodgers ruling — would have been able to handle a full review of the question of whether Bills receiver Brandin Cooks had caught the ball and was down by contact before it came loose and was intercepted by Broncos cornerback Ja’Quan McMillian, would Butterworth have applied the same standard and reasoning that he applied in the Steelers-Ravens game? Would Butterworth have performed the pool report after the game, instead of referee Carl Cheffers? Would Butterworth have contradicted himself from the Rodgers play?
Cheffers shouldn’t have handled the official post-game pool report, because Cheffers didn’t personally make or review the call. Whoever decided the call was correct should have explained it — and, ideally, should have explained why and how the standard changed from December 7 (the day of the Week 14 Steelers-Ravens game) to January 17.
Bills cornerback Tre’Davious White was flagged for a 30-yard pass interference penalty that effectively ended Saturday’s game, setting up the Broncos for a chip-shot field goal to win in overtime. Afterward, White insisted he hadn’t committed a penalty and that the officials gave the Broncos a gift call because they were playing at home in Denver.
“I thought that I didn’t interfere with the guy, when the ball got there I swiped through, knocked the ball down, then fell on top of him,” White said. “I think the crowd probably played a big-time factor.”
White said he doesn’t think NFL referees understand what good coverage looks like.
“Referees are human and people make mistakes, I just think it should be up to the players to decide the game,” White said. “When the game is fought so hard and comes down to the wire, plays like that, that’s a professional bang-bang play. As a defensive back, that’s what you want, take the guy to the ground and finish the play. Referees just don’t know ball.”
White, who also got an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for yelling at an official after the penalty, was more composed after the game but still just as adamant that the officials had messed up.
“I just think they had bad judgment on that play,” White said.
Through 60 minutes of regulation in Saturday’s Bills-Broncos game, not a single flag was thrown for pass interference. On Denver’s final drive of overtime, there were two.
Both were called against the Bills.
The first was called against Bills cornerback Taron Johnson on Broncos receiver Courtland Sutton for a 17-yard gain, from Denver’s 47 to the Buffalo 36. The second happened two plays later, moving the ball from the Buffalo 38 to the Bills eight after the officials called cornerback Tre’Davious White for interference against Broncos receiver Marvin Mims Jr.
And that was that.
Here’s what referee Carl Cheffers told pool reporter Jeff Legwold after the game: “The first one was an arm grab. The defender held the receiver’s right arm down, which prevented him from going up for the pass with two hands. He was attempting a one-arm grab of the ball. And so, that restriction of his right arm was why pass interference was called. . . The second was early contact and an arm grab that materially restricted the receiver.”
That’s fine. But late in the fourth quarter, Broncos cornerback Riley Moss did the same thing — or worse — to Bills receiver Brandin Cooks. There was no call.
The issue is consistency. For a game to be called a certain way for four quarters and then for it to change in overtime isn’t what the NFL should want. If the plays in overtime were interference, the play late in regulation should have been interference.
And if that had happened, the Bills may have won the game in regulation.
As it stands, on the three most important interference calls and non-calls of the game, the Broncos had all three of them go their way. The Bills had none. And the Broncos are moving out.
In Saturday’s AFC division-round game in Denver, the overtime period took a sudden turn when a throw by Bills quarterback Josh Allen to receiver Brandin Cooks turned into an interception by Broncos cornerback Ja’Quan McMillian.
After the game, referee Carl Cheffers explained the play to pool reporter Jeff Legwold.
“The receiver has to complete the process of a catch,” Cheffers said. “He was going to the ground as part of the process of the catch and he lost possession of the ball when he hit the ground. The defender gained possession of it at that point. The defender is the one that completed the process of the catch, so the defender was awarded the ball.”
And while Cheffers said the ruling was confirmed by the replay process, the NFL’s official game book does not mention that a full review was initiated. Presumably, then, the ruling was confirmed via expedited review.
In isolation, the ruling seems to be accurate. There was no “clear and obvious” evidence to overturn the on-field decision that Cooks failed to maintain possession after hitting the ground. However, the outcome can’t be reconciled with the replay ruling from the Week 14 Steelers-Ravens game, in which the replay process overturned the ruling of an interception when Pittsburgh quarterback Aaron Rodgers apparently failed to “survive the ground.”
“The offensive player had control of the ball and as he was going to the ground, there was a hand in there, but he never lost control of the ball and then his knees hit the ground in control,” NFL V.P. of instant replay Mark Butterworth said at the time. “So therefore, by rule, he is down by contact with control of the ball.”
If that’s the reasoning that applied to the Rodgers catch, the same reasoning should have applied to Cooks. The key is consistency. Either the NFL got it wrong with Rodgers, or the NFL got it wrong with Cooks. In both cases, however, the league defended two very different outcomes.
And, obviously, the outcome on Saturday contributed directly to the Broncos and not the Bills advancing to the AFC Championship.
One of the biggest plays in Saturday’s Broncos win over the Bills was Broncos safety Ja’Quan McMillian’s interception of a Josh Allen pass to Brandin Cooks in overtime.
McMillian wrestled the ball out of Cooks’ hands as or after Cooks went to the ground with apparent possession of the ball. Officials ruled it an interception on the field and the Broncos went on to kick a field goal for a 33-30 win.
Bills head coach Sean McDermott was unable to challenge the ruling because it was subject to automatic review as a turnover and because challenges are not allowed in over time, but he called a timeout after the play to speak to officials. After the game, McDermott said he called the timeout because he wanted “the process to slow down” and said “In my eyes it was” a catch by Cooks. McDermott’s gambit didn’t lead to any further review and he made his disagreement with the ruling clear after the game.
“It’s hard for me to understand why it was ruled the way it was ruled,” McDermott said. “If it is ruled that way, then why wasn’t it slowed down just to make sure that we have this right. That would have made a lot of sense to me. . . . I’m saying it because I’m standing up for Buffalo, damn it. I’m standing up for us. That’s not how it should go down.”
The Bills are no strangers to painful losses, but Saturday’s will likely earn a high ranking on the all-time list.
