I don't care how strong you are, once your shoulders are behind your hips while your knees are already somewhat flexed (but not enough to do the limbo) and your feet forward, you're hitting the ground. Look at the video as he receives that shoulder shove and tell me how he could possibly have recovered from it. If his lower body had not already started forward towards the ball, then probably he'd've made the struggle vs. the opponent obvious, but at the time he was hit he had no choice but to fall backward.

It's not like Luke Kuechly is a 6', 195 pound cornerback. He is 6'3" and 235 himself. I don't know how you can consider it a total stretch that he would be able to move impede Gronk if he wanted to.

The only way this "horse" is leaving the glue factory is in plastic bottles.

It seems even "all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't change the harsh reality that sometimes the really close calls go your way, and sometimes they don't, and either way, sometimes you just have to accept the call and move on.

Robert, there are guidelines the NCAA uses that puts PI into about 6 categories. Each category described what constitutes PI and in order to call PI, you the action must fit into such category. I am almost positive that these came from the NFL and their philosophies.

And I looked it up, these categories are in the CCA Manual on page 27. There are 6 categories for DPI. There are 4 categories for OPI. And I know the NFL uses the same guidelines as these have been discussed by the association I work with and there are both NFL officials and NFL evaluators in this group. And one of the NFL evaluators is the person I work for in D3 in my area.

Peace

Just to clarify, do you have DPI on this play if the defender who intercepted it isn't there?

To be completely honest, this aspect of the equation, I believe, is not well defined. Someone brought that up earlier and it got me thinking.

I fully agree that the existence of the interceptor (even if he simply bats the ball away) making a play completely in front of the receiver warrants waiving off the interference penalty.

However - it does make for an interesting scenario that you've alluded to, and that I'm not sure what the ruling SHOULD be, much less what it WOULD be.

If the game was not over at this moment - and the officials got together and agreed that the ball was uncatchable by the receiver - BUT the receiver was conceivably close enough to prevent the defender from actually catching the ball ... what's the ruling. MUCH tougher decision there.

That said... I honestly am flabbergasted that ANYONE who is an official is arguing about this call. Other than NE sympathizers, there's no basis for it. I don't think it's even remotely possible that the receiver is able to completely stop his forward momentum and reverse his path and then make up 2 yards within the POINT THREE FOUR SECONDS that elapsed between the first conceivable instant of interference and the instant the ball was caught.

Think about it... the fastest players in the world run a 4.00 40. That's 10 yards in one second, at full speed. So even at full speed TOWARD the ball, it takes .2 seconds to go 2 yards. He was moving AWAY from the ball. Someone expects him to stop, reverse, and go those 2 yards AND go around the defender AND catch the ball. Impossible. Zero point zero zero zero, people.

Yes. The ball would have gone much further, and could conceivably have been caught by the receiver before it made it to the ground.

THIS part is simply delusional. At the moment the defender and Gronk are equally close to the ball, there has been no interference. Both defender and receiver take another full step (in opposing directions) before interference is born.

I do not agree with the premise of how you framed this. Gronk was stopping his momentum already, beginning to come back. Only then was he driven back, not by a little DB but by one of the best LBs in the game. The DB then slid under the newly created space. The DB *probably* could get there anyway, but it's not anywhere near impossible to me.

I accept you see it more definitively than many others do, but I thinks it's quite condescending to say that a large number who don't see it that way are lesser officials. We have two former NFL supervisor of officials who would have called DPI, one who wasn't sure but wouldn't have changed it (Mike Periera) and one who wholeheartedly would have called it DPI (Jim Daopoulos). Are you flabbergasted at them too? Are they NE sympathizers?

It was a tough call made in an high-pressure situation. Both interpretations are valid and justifiable. I would hope we could discuss a very close one in a professional way without this kind of hyperbole.

Surely the first clause of that doesn't matter, just because there's no point in preventing the interception after time expires wouldn't change the rules regarding interference. (Even though the defense now values an interception and a breakup equally.)

To me, his opinion is meaningless. His comments that the other officials stuck themselves into the call is factually untrue, so his whole thought process is questionable.

Very likely because the facts are now changed. The philosophy I've been taught (again at the NCAA level but as JRut states likely comes from the NFL) is if a pass is underthrown and a separate player intercepts the ball, the contact behind him is ignored. It's a simple philosophy and applies on this play.

If the pass is not intercepted you have different facts on the play. Since you can now consider the contact the category would be early contact not playing the ball.

Yes because it is probably early contact on the receiver that had a chance to catch the ball. But the ball never got there and at that level the ball must be there to stick with a foul.

Peace

I understand the philosophy, but I don't think it applies on this play.

The intercepting defender and the interference happened almost right next to each other, within a couple yards.

Tough for the ball to get to the receiver when the receiver's being dragged away from the ball.