****MNF****Panthers vs Patriots****

[DJ's left nut]

I still don't think it's a PI. There's simply no way that ball was being caught. Perhaps Gronk could've kept it from being picked, but with zeros on the clock, an incompletion is the same as a pick there.

That throw was as uncatchable as they got. Had Kuechly died on the field halfway through that play, Gronk still wasn't going to catch that ball because he was being undercut by the DB who was tracking it the whole way (Lester). Brady was facing severe pressure up the middle and he badly underthrew it. None of the contact between Kuechly and Gronk changed the fact that Gronk wasn't going to turn that into a completed pass - Lester would've knocked it away at worst.

I went and looked up both holding and illegal contact - both of those are null once the ball is in the air. As such, neither one of those could've been called there (and I'm stunned by how many talking heads didn't bother to do this research; it's right there in the rulebook and yet idiots like Chris Carter were saying it should've been an illegal contact penalty).

I guess the ultimate issue is what constitutes uncatchable - more critically, is it only the throw that matters or is it also how the defenders react to it? Unfortunately, the rule is mostly silent. However, it does note that the ball has to be uncatchable by the 'involved players'.

Well Lester, who wasn't an 'involved player' snagging that thing well before Gronk would've been able to get to it would seem to make it uncatchable as to the involved players to me.

Honestly, while I think this is a pretty uncommon interpretation of the rule, it does appear to me to be the correct way to interpret it. I think the no-call here is correct.