Louis Murphy: It Sure Looked Like A Catch To Me

I hate to feed fans of the Oakland Raiders anything. This is a franchise whose fanbase is already convinced that there’s some mass conspiracy in the NFL officiating booths to screw the Raiders over every game. Why? I don’t know. What reason would NFL refs have to hate the Raiders? Did Al Davis just take a dump in all of their hats one day? Regardless, there’s this perception of the Raiders not actually being a bad team, but getting screwed by the refs every week.

That said, I don’t see how Murphy didn’t catch that ball

Even as I listen to Mike Pereira explain why it was an incompletion, I don’t get it. Not the rule. I get the rule. I just don’t get how Murphy didn’t do everything Pereira says he has to.

The way that play looked to me, Murphy caught the ball, got both feet down, and THEN started to go to the ground. He wasn’t in the act of going to the ground when the catch itself was made. He caught the ball, got the feet down, then got taken to the ground. The TD would and should have occurred before his falling happened.

Even given the rest, after he hit the ground, here’s the sequence of the play as I see it:

1. Murphy hits the ground.
2. The ball jiggles a little bit.
3. The ball jiggles a little more.
4. As Murphy starts to get up, he lets go of the ball.

It’s entirely possible I’m wrong here. The NFL has access to several different views that we as TV viewers do not. Maybe one of those views had conclusive evidence to overturn the play.

Even in that case, however, this is entirely too complicated of a process. To quote former Raiders coach and retired broadcaster John Madden, “I remember when a catch was a catch.”

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I Guess It’s About Time We Covered This Ben Roethlisberger Thing

You know the story by now. Ben Roethlisberger has been accused of rape.

I’m not going to re-hash the basic stories. Everyone knows that the accuser filed a civil suit with no criminal charges, which means there won’t be an actual police investigation. Most media outlets have already touched on the “Ben always has a traumatic event following a Super Bowl” story. (Honestly, is two times really enough to denote a pattern?)

What I’m going to say is very simple:

This is a shame.

Obviously, if the charges are true, it’s a shame. Any time a rape occurs, it’s a shame. Ben Roethlisberger’s status as a famous athlete makes it no better and no worse. And if it’s true, the fact that he’s the QB for my favorite team won’t do a thing to help me forgive him.

But it’s also a shame if the charges are false. If they’re false, it proves that people will do anything for money. It shows that innocent people make prime targets. Just like with Kobe, even if Roethlisberger is found innocent, people are going to look at him like a rapist for the rest of his life. Some will say he only got an innocent verdict because he’s famous.

I think it’s fishy that there are no criminal charges. If myself or someone I love were sexually assaulted, the first thing I would want is justice, not money. I can’t speak for this woman, but that’s my point of view.

Hopefully the legal process will bring a correct verdict out of this—even if that verdict is a guilty one. For the sake of everyone involved, I hope that’s not the case.

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