NFL explained why the Steelers' game-winning TD against the Patriots was overturned. Here's the flaw.

The Steelers lost to the Patriots on Sunday because this didn’t count as a touchdown:

There are other reasons the Steelers lost, of course. Ben Roethlisberger probably shouldn’t have thrown a slant at the goal line two plays later, because throwing slants at the goal line on the biggest play of the year against New England is a bad idea.

But if there’s one thing that flipped the result of this game, it’s that Roethlisberger’s 10-yard pass to Jesse James with 28 seconds left didn’t count as a TD. It was ruled that way initially, and it looked like the Steelers would take a 31-27 lead with so little time left that Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski probably couldn’t answer it.

So, why wasn’t this a touchdown?

“The receiver, in the end zone, did not survive the ground,” was the explanation on the field by referee Tony Corrente. Translated: James didn’t control the ball when it hit the ground.

The strongest evidence to that point is that when James lunges forward with the ball and puts it over the goal line, it wiggles a bit in his hands as he comes to the grass. And later, the front tip of the ball touches the ground.

The NFL has established in the past that you can do some pretty “football move”-like things and still not get credited with a catch. If James really did lose control of the ball by letting it hit the ground before he possessed it, then this isn’t a catch. In that sense, the call against James is not that different than the Dez Bryant play three years ago.

In that play, this wasn’t ruled a catch:

The Bryant call, given the NFL’s catch rules, seems right to me. It’s pretty obvious that Bryant, who only had one hand on the ball, lost control of it when it touched the ground at Lambeau Field and bounced basically to the top of his wrist.

Here’s the ball on the ground:

And that was impermissible because Bryant hadn’t become a “runner,” per the NFL’s definition of the term. If anything, he was a forward-reacher.

“I had my knee down, turned up the field. Whether they consider that a football move or not is up to them to decide. I guess I don’t know a lot of things about football. I thought it was a touchdown for sure,” James said after the game.

But in James’ case, there’s a lot less clarity.

If the NFL’s replay officials decided James didn’t control the ball when it hit the ground, then fine: That’s not a catch.

Eventually, the ball does touch the ground. We can see when James skids forward a bit at the end of the play that the nose of the ball is touching green. But at that point, the ball might be firmly grasped with his right hand (around the ball) and either his left hand or arm (which we can’t really tell from available angles).

But while the ball’s actually moving? I.e., when the ball is doing the thing that almost certainly caused officials to overturn the catch? There’s nothing approaching hard evidence that the ball was touching the ground. The ball might have moved in his right hand, with James’ knuckles taking the ground’s impact and popping the ball up.

This screen grab’s from the moment of The Wiggle:

Is the ball touching the ground there? Definitely possible.

Is the ball moving because it touched the ground there? Definitely possible.

But not certain.

The NFL’s explanation of the overturn, obviously, takes a different view. Senior officiating vice president Al Riveron says the ball touches the ground after James loses control of it:

The ball definitely touches the ground at the end of the play. That’s clear. Less clear is whether James had otherwise grasped and controlled it by that point. It’s made cloudier because we don’t see the ball hit the ground while it’s wiggling.

While we’re on the subject of really specific NFL rules, the league requires that there be indisputable video evidence to overturn calls on the field. You don’t have to work that hard to dispute that James lost control, and that’s even if we take it as a given that the ball’s movements in his hands were because it touched the ground.

This clause in the NFL rulebook doesn’t make the replay officials’ case any easier to make: “If the ball touches the ground after the player secures control of it, it is a catch, provided that the player continues to maintain control.”

The NFL’s explanation doesn’t address uncertainty around whether the ball hit the ground while it was moving in James’ hands. It also doesn’t explain why James couldn’t be in control of the ball as it touches the ground at the end of the play.

Corrente, the referee, also doesn’t discuss the issue here:

There’s a perfectly good argument that James didn’t catch the ball.

It boils down to rules being rules. Even though James had the ball and reached for the goal line, he didn’t possess it through the catch by the NFL’s definition.

But, rules being rules, the NFL’s replay staff also needs to be certain that either contact with the ground knocked the ball out of James’ possession, or that he didn’t possess it when it touched the ground at the end.

There are so many disputable things here that “indisputable” is impossible.

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