Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow rarely uses Twitter, but he was bothered enough by what he saw and heard during the divisional round of the playoffs to log on and defend NFL officials against accusations that they missed calls.
Tweeting for the first time in almost two years, Burrow wrote that people don’t understand what the catch rules are in the NFL, and those who do understand the rules know that the officials got some controversial calls over the weekend right.
“The amount of ppl that don’t understand what a catch is in the rule book flabbergasts me. And it’s not the officials. The two plays yesterday were not difficult calls, and they got them both right,” Burrow wrote.
Burrow didn’t say which calls he was referring to, but the controversial call that most fans were talking about was the Josh Allen pass that the officials ruled a Broncos interception, but the Bills insisted was caught by Brandin Cooks. Burrow apparently thinks the Bills were wrong and the officials were right that Cooks didn’t complete the process of the catch by surviving the ground before Broncos cornerback Ja’Quan McMillian took the ball from him.
One thing Burrow is unquestionably right about is that people still don’t understand what a catch is under NFL rules. The league has made some changes to the catch rule, but it’s always just a matter of time before a new call leads to a new round of controversy.