Welcome to the Rich Eisen Podcast, everybody. I'm your host of Rich Eisen. It took me a very long time to think about coming up with this name. One of my guests on the program today, Dan Patrick, taught me years ago to be as self-promotional as possible and drop as many names as I possibly can.

And Dan later on will, I think, prove me correct by being self-promotional and also dropping some names, as Dan likes to do on his radio show, the Dan Patrick show, that you can hear coast to coast and watch on the 101 network on Direc TV. You also see Dan, of course, on NBC

Football Night in America. We'll talk about the Monday night game with Dan and also the upcoming

Sunday night game, the Colts and the Giants, the Manning Bowl. That's later on in the program.

The Calvin Johnson catch. We'll discuss that at length with a couple of my senior producers here at NFL Network, two guys that are some of the funnier guys, Jimmy. We all have some people in our offices that are funny, filled with personality, and those folks don't usually get the chance to shine on a podcast. And I'm not one of those people that's going to shy away from giving the

spotlight to people who help put together some of the more enlightening and entertaining and

informative programs here at NFL Network. Two senior producers, Jason Wormser and Bartia

Shereas, will join me later on to kick around some hot topics in the national football league.

And that, of course, does include the Calvin Johnson catch or non-catch. And obviously, this is what a lot of people are talking

around water cooler's about this week as to why that wouldn't be a catch. And the reason why is

what's in the rule book. It was a completely proper interpretation of the rule.

Now, so was the tuck rule back in the playoffs in 2001. I hate that rule with a passion,

and I think it should be outlawed that basically if you're fumbling, you can tell what's a fumble

and you can tell what's an incomplete pass. You don't need to

codify it and confuse things with the verbiage that seems to be from the tax code. And that seems

to be what the NFL has now done with what is a catch. And the bottom line is, is if you are

going down to the ground, it doesn't matter if you have two feet in the end zone. If you're going

down to the ground, you should still maintain possession of the ball, according to the rulebook, which Calvin Johnson did until he used the ball to essentially get up and try and celebrate. Now, common sense would say that's still a catch. The rule of the NFL says that it is not a catch. So how do you change these things? I say we should

maybe include into this rulebook the concept of a second act that is being discussed, but it has not

been put on the books. If you use the ball to get up to try and celebrate, and it's obvious in that respect,

you don't need to maintain the possession of the ball.

Now, this may open up a little bit more of a gray area, but at least the NFL will be on the side of common sense than not.

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