Gronkowski is clearly being held,so why was the flag thrown? He couldn't even make an effort to catch it if he tried pic.twitter.com/fd4OoVDzB8
— Jason Michalski (@jcmichalski) November 19, 2013
The dumbest part of the final call in last night's Monday Night Football game between the Carolina Panthers and New England Patriots was the logic involved.
Set aside the legalese of the rule book -- even though it appears the rule book would support throwing the flag. The whole point of defensive pass interference is that we don't know what would have happened without the foul, and so the defense gets penalized. The uncatchable ball provision is there so that the referee can pick up the flag if it's completely clear that the pass couldn't have been legally caught, anyway. You know, like if the pass went twenty yards out of bounds.
I think we can all agree that it was exceedingly unlikely that Rob Gronkowski would have caught Tom Brady's last pass, but to call it an uncatchable ball is ludicrous.