Seahawks’ Pete Carroll wants NFL to change catch rule

Seahawks coach Pete Carroll believes there’s a simple solution to what has become a confusing interpretation of the NFL’s catch rule, something that had an impact in Sunday’s game against Arizona.

“I wish we would just use (football) sense,” Carroll told “Brock and Salk” on Monday. “You look at it – did the guy catch it? Yeah, he caught it. OK, now the ball is out. That’s what happened. The guy caught the football on our one play.”

The increasingly common question about what does and doesn’t constitute a catch in the NFL was raised anew in the second quarter of Sunday’s game when linebacker Bobby Wagner knocked the ball out of the hands of Cardinals tight end Darren Fells. Whether or not Fells had possession of the ball before that happened was the question. Carroll felt he did. So did one official who threw his bean bag, indicating a fumble and therefore a catch. But the ruling on the field was an incomplete pass, and that was upheld upon review.

Dean Blandino, the NFL’s head of officiating, told the league’s television network the next day that it was an “extremely close” and that officials didn’t feel there was enough evidence that Fells “clearly established himself,” which they would have needed to do in order to reverse the call on the field.

“The ball was coming out just as he was taking his third step and we never felt that he had clearly established himself as a runner,” Blandino told the NFL Network.

Carroll was clearly miffed at the ruling. But his issue is with the way the rule is written and not just how it was enforced.

“Forget the steps or whatever you want to count and all that – he caught the ball and then he turned and then the ball came out,” Carroll said. “Did he catch it? Yeah. Is the ball out? Yeah. I wish we would use that sense, but we’re trying to make it so defined that you get stuck with the definition of it. ‘Is it two full steps and then he looks like he was doing the football move’ and all that, all those things. Did he catch the ball?”

Carroll suggested “football people” should be in charge of making that determination, saying, “You’ve got to have the right guys in the box that understand that stuff.”

“They’ve got to make a decision but make a decision that’s the right decision, not based on, ‘Well, we said last week it’s this many steps.’ They’re trying to do this right,” he said, “but it gets … too difficult to to stay with all the criteria. They’ll work to figure it out again.”

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