How the Dez Bryant no-catch call changed the NFL forever

[1942willys]

The fact that Cowboys continue to hold on to that moment at the pivotal moment that altered the next 10 years of Cowboy history is just sad to me.

I mean even after the Dez catch/no catch moment, there were still, what 4+ minutes left in the game? People act like it was the last play of the game or something.

ITs like no one talks about the series after 'The Catch' and how close we came to coming back but just fell short. That is considered the beginning of the end of the cowboys dysnasty of Tom Landry by many and thus pretty significant. The Dez catch debacle is more of just another example of us coming close and failing

 

[MarcusRock]

Forever the official official apologist

Forever my fanboi following me around, yet never discussing the topic. Coincidentally, never accusing me of being wrong either. Wonder why.

 

[buybuydandavis]

It was a catch, of course. It was ruled a catch on the field at 3:58:43 p.m. on Jan. 11, 2015, and it remained a catch until 4:02:29, when the referee announced the reversal by the letter of the law.

It was a catch by the letter of the law at the time. Multiple football moves. The Catch was *completed* long before the ground caused the fumble.

 

[Jake]

Since we just played Green Bay, How the Dez Bryant no-catch call changed the NFL forever. Is this the Biggest Cowboys game being done wrong since 2000???​

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/34997228/how-dez-bryant-no-catch-changed-nfl-forever

WE ALL SAW IT. It happened right before our very eyes.

Fifty-two point three million of us watched it live on television. Untold millions have watched it since, in its YouTube afterlife. And to watch it once is to watch it many times, almost by definition -- nobody even had the chance to watch it just once, since the replays started rolling as soon as the ball was whistled dead. The play itself took about seven seconds, snap to signal. The ensuing deliberation took another four minutes, give or take, and the controversy the play generated has lasted for nearly eight years and counting.

It was a catch, of course. It was ruled a catch on the field at 3:58:43 p.m. on Jan. 11, 2015, and it remained a catch until 4:02:29, when the referee announced the reversal by the letter of the law. Then three years later, it became a catch again, when the NFL changed the rules to accommodate its brilliance. Now every time we watch an NFL game we witness some aspect of its legacy, because one of the greatest catches in the history of the game was ruled, "after review," incomplete.

There have been other catches that have, in the space of a few seconds, caused football empires to rise and fall. Bradshaw-Swann, 1976; Montana-Clark, 1982; Manning-Tyree, 2008; Roethlisberger-Holmes, 2009; Brady-Edelman 2017: these are catches that have changed games, careers, fortunes and lives. But they all counted. The pass that Tony Romo threw to Dez Bryant in a playoff game between the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers in 2015 -- or, in its enduring social media afterlife, #DezCaughtIt -- did not, and yet it has changed the way we watch football.

I bring this up because of all blaming Jerry including from me or the coaches, etc. But feel the Cowboys were really ripped off in this game....

Was that game the Super Bowl? I thought it was the divisional round with over 4 minutes left and ARod on the other sideline.

So the Dez catch/no catch prevented what? Winning that game, winning the next game in Seattle, then beating Brady in the Super Bowl? Okay. People seem to forget the PI flag on Dallas versus Detroit that was picked up in the Cowboys favor. It was textbook PI, and would've put Detroit in position to win. Odd that.

Instead all of the focus is on a correct call based on a dumb rule, so dumb that they changed it, but it was the rule at the time. Pretending Jerry's Cowboys were ripped off, preventing their greatest playoff run since the 90s is a coping mechanism. It's been a decade since and they still haven't gotten over the hump.