For the casual viewer, as the majority of the Super Bowl audience tends to be, there may be little to take away from the Philadelphia Eagles 41-33 victory over the defending champion New England Patriots. And my goal is not to diminish the accomplishments of the Eagles. The game was hard fought and their triumph against the favored Pats was well earned. But if you read between the lines, the NFL is going to have its work cut out for itself during the offseason.
RISK VS REWARD
Let’s begin with the big hit by Eagles’ safety Malcolm Jenkins. Early in the 2nd quarter, New England wide receiver Brandin Cooks caught a pass in open space from Tom Brady and darted about looking to gain some extra yardage. Jenkins blindsided Cooks with a vicious hit that took the Pats’ receiver permanently out of the game with a head injury and it sure didn’t take a team of independent neurologists to figure that out. Cooks lay face down on the field of U.S. Bank Stadium…motionless. Jenkins wasn’t penalized for the hit and the Patriots lost one of their best players for the remainder of the game. Here I was thinking those kinds of hits were illegal, although those rules have been reshaped over the past few years. This was an instance of both, yet the Eagles and their safety faced no repercussions for the devastating hit.
No matter how you slice it, Jenkins is definitely leading with the crown of his helmet and making contact with the Cooks’ jaw. It wasn’t necessarily a dirty play, but Jenkins was undoubtedly looking to blow him up. Coming from the blind side, the veteran safety certainly picked where he was aiming and what kind of hit he was about to deliver and matters were made worse as Cooks danced around looking for an opening and lost track of Jenkins altogether. Whether or not it was a dirty play is neither here nor there now, and I don’t necessarily think Jenkins should have been flagged for the hit. However, I do believe the hit to be an illegal one and it’s something the NFL needs to look closely at during the offseason.
In that situation, Cooks isn’t afforded the protections of a “defenseless receiver” (like Rob Gronkowski was 2-weeks earlier when he was concussed on a targeted head shot by Jacksonville Jaguars’ safety Barry Church), but since when did leading with the crown of the helmet to an opponent’s head become legal again? I remember the league cracking down on these types of hits a few years back, but maybe I missed something. Surely Jenkins made more contact than just in the head and neck area, but the other parameters of the hit should be irrelevant because Cooks wasn’t knocked unconscious by the shoulder in his chest, it was the helmet in his mouth that turned out the lights. Blindside, crack-back blocks on turnovers are illegal for the very reason demonstrated in that play and the officials allowing that kind of hit to go unchallenged early in the game further highlighted the concussion culture present in the league and the NFL’s unwillingness to discourage that behavior on the game’s grandest stage. On plays like that, where a player is injured as a result, it is the responsibility of the officials on the field to watch available replays during the injury timeout and handle disciplinary actions accordingly. Until that happens, players will continue to take these kinds of shots simply because the upside of removing a star player from your opponents’ team (for the rest of the game) clearly outweighs the downside of a 15-yard penalty…especially in the Super Bowl.
IS IT A DAMN CATCH OR NOT?
On two occasions during Super Bowl LII, we were treated to the NFL’s increasingly stupid and frustrating “catch” rule.
Midway through the 3rd quarter, Philly QB Nick Foles hit running back Corey Clement for what appeared to be a touchdown. After several minutes of replays, longtime commentators Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth (and anyone watching on TV) both conceded that touchdown catch would be overturned. Instead the Eagles were awarded the touchdown and millions of football fans were left scratching their heads. Clement had possession of the ball with both feet in bounds but he didn’t have control, that was clear. He eventually did gain control, but stepped on the boundary marker before that control was established. All season long, similar plays had been ruled as no-catch. So why on this instance was the play allowed to stand?
Near the end of the 4th quarter, with the Patriots now leading 33-32, Foles found his tight end Zach Ertz who caught an 11-yard pass and dove to the endzone line for the score but the ball skittered free once he landed on the goal line. Once again, minutes went by as the judges on the field and millions around the world watched one replay after another. In this instance, Patriots’ safety Devin McCourty hit Ertz inside the 5-yard line initiating the dive, meaning Ertz was a runner when he broke the plain of the endzone. Because of that distinction, the ground cannot cause a fumble and the Eagles were rightfully given the go ahead, and eventual game winning, touchdown.
Unfortunately for the fans, this was another in a long line of muddied “catch” controversies and this time the world was watching. Due to massive inconsistency and differing interpretation of the rules, we saw both ends of the spectrum. Clement’s touchdown was not a catch based on the NFL’s current definition and should have been overturned. Had Ertz dove in one complete motion without being hit by McCourty, he would not have “survived the ground” with the catch and that play would (should) likely have been overturned, almost exactly like what what happened to the Pittsburgh Steelers and tight end Jesse James in their loss to the Pats during week 15. If nothing else comes of this, hopefully owners around the league can get the rules committee to tighten up the definition of a catch so we aren’t subjected to needless replays, delays and ever evolving definitions only serving to complicate matters further.
THERE’S GOT TO BE SOME HOLDING
Nothing is certain except for death, taxes and offensive lines holding. For the life of me, I can’t remember the last time I watched an NFL game where there wasn’t at least one holding penalty. Sure, there are probably instances where it’s happened, but there are varying degrees of holding on every single snap in the NFL. In fact, it’s actually legal. Offensive lineman can hold inside the shoulders at the armpit, but not when a defender attempts to make a move to go around them. Throughout the course of SB LII not a single call was levied against either team. Actually, there were only seven total penalties called during the game. Philadelphia was flagged six times for 35 yards while New England took a single 5-yard penalty (only their 8th penalty of the entire playoffs). So for Pats’ fans looking to blame the refs, don’t start with the penalty stats. In reality, it was the whistles the refs didn’t blow which affected the outcome of the game much more and it all comes down to holding.
To the untrained eye it would appear that neither team was capable of playing defense as both squads combined for 1,151-yards of total offense (a new SB record) and only one punt. Even the over/under betting line at 48.5 was completely blown out of the water with a total score of 74. This came as a bit of a surprise considering the game featured the 4th and 5th ranked scoring defenses in the league, but you know what makes things really difficult for defenses…offensive holding. When the line is allowed to hold at the point of attack, it buys time for competent QBs to go through their route progressions and forces defensive backs to shadow receivers in the open field for longer than usual. Ultimately, it takes a more physical toll on the defenses than it does the offenses and you see what kind of shootout it produced.
Even with a fast-paced, record-setting game the ratings were still down 7%. In fact, this was the lowest rated Super Bowl since 2009. While an estimated 103-million viewers in nothing to scoff at, it’s the continuation of a downward trend for the NFL and there are plenty of factors involved. People are sick of the Patriots in a league designed to have parity. There are boycotts both in support of and in demonstration against Colin Kaepernick and other players taking political stances. Plenty of stupid rules with poor enforcement are bogging down the on-the-field product. While the NFL can’t do much about the first two issues, they can certainly take the initiative to streamline the rules with a much more straightforward and common sense approach.