It wasn't a catch

Full disclosure: I am a Packers fan. But I am a football fan first, so I will keep opinion out of this post and just focus on what the rulebook says and I hope you will not immediately denounce what I'm saying as bias. Also, I have been at work all night and haven't seen any of the media talk about the play.

http://i.imgur.com/YaOGNK3.jpg That's the page regarding completions straight from the rulebook. I keep seeing article 3(c) being brought up in the discussion, but it is not relevant to this play. We have two conflicting rules:

3(c) says that when a player is making a catch, it is complete when the player has time to make an action common to the game.

Item 1 says that when a player is making a catch while going to the ground, the catch is complete if the player maintains control through the process of falling to the ground.

Logic dictates that if there's two conflicting rules, the more specific rule would supersede the other. In this case, Item 1 is more specific to the play than 3(c), so 3(c) does not apply. It does not matter how many "steps" he took or that he stretched for the endzone, because that was all done in the process of falling to the ground.

Now, according to the last line of Item 1, it's still a completion. He regained control before it touched the ground. But now we have Item 4: http://i.imgur.com/l1xOl9k.jpg.

He does not maintain control after the ball hits the ground, so incomplete.

All this talk about "football moves" is irrelevant. I've been told that many analysts and official people are talking about "football moves". this is the most logical interpretation of the rule, but this the NFL we're talking about. Not really known for logic.

Ok I lied, I'm going to include one opinion: I don't think it's a bad rule. I think it has it's place in clearing up ambiguity regarding most dive catches. This was a rare situation that this rule wasn't intended for, but still applies to.