I think it was fine as a no call, but to call it and then pick it up looks shady.
If AWJr had turned to catch the ball it would be Fresno St. 3.0. I watched last night and he ran across with the guy in motion and he knew they would try to throw to him but the Giants learned the hard way to avoid AWJr. He was trying to get over there and break it up and he did but it would have been great had he caught it and ran for a bit and hit the turf ala Fresno St. last year.
This is still called all the time on deep balls. That's the hard part of this call on a poorly thrown ball that led to the contact, but it's still called in an array of other situations. still fantastic by AWJr to even get there to make an impactIt's an odd play because it's a poorly thrown ball.
Winfield is in the area of where the ball is coming first and the receiver has to stop and try to come back to the ball.
I think in a case like this, whoever is first in spot of where the ball is should have ownership to that spot.
If a WR has to change direction to get back into a play, you can't blame the defender for beating him into that space and then having contact occur because the direction of the play changed.
If you call PI on this, you'll have a lot more OC's draw up plays for "badly thrown" balls where the WR can help instigate contact to get a call.
Similar to when Randy Moss was a Viking. He'd break down the field, CB couldn't keep up. Pass was under-thrown. He'd stop. CB run into him.
He'd still catch it though, but it was an easy way to get a PI call.
This and a couple of other plays Winfield made last night made me realize yet again how much of a difference he made last year. Defense would still be poor this year, but with a player like that we would have at least 1 victory and possibly even 2 this year.
You have to admit that was quite a play coming across the field... not surprising for us but...Looks like he hits the WR early. I'd stick with PI.