The Eagles have now had five touchdowns taken off the board this season due to penalties, the latest coming in their ugly 21-18 win over the Carolina Panthers.
The touchdown removed from the board this time came in the first quarter, when Jalen Hurts found DeVonta Smith from two-yards out on fourth down. The score was negated, however, when Greg Ward was called for offensive pass interference. It was the same flag that took away a Zach Ertz touchdown last week in the team’s loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.
The question is, why does it keep happening?
Speaking Monday morning to Angelo Cataldi on the WIP Morning Show, Sirianni gave a long, detailed answer on what happened, and what the coaching point is to prevent it from happening again:
“I have to do a better job of teaching the techniques. I’ve been teaching the techniques that Greg Ward used yesterday for 12 years now in the NFL. What happened yesterday was the defensive back initiated the contact — but that is hard for the referee to see. So Greg is going running a route, and you can see the defensive back say ‘Oh man, I’m beat, I’m going to run into him.’ And when you see a collision like that…our job as a receiver is always going to be to avoid the collision and dodge out of the way.
I’ll let you in on what the coaching point is. The coaching point is ‘Hey, you are going to play a game of chicken you know you’re going to lose.’ We all know that game. You are going run right at him and you are going to play a game of chicken you are going to lose. As soon as you get him to move his feet and come off his force, you jump out of the way. Well what happened, Greg is on course to do that, he does a good job and No. 26 who is a heck of a player for them, realizes he is beat and just turns and runs into him. When that happens we just have to do a better job of dodging that, I have to do a better job of teaching that, but credit to them because they know the rules and they initiated the contact and got the offensive pass interference. The referees, that is hard on them, because all they see is the collision there. When you look at it you can say ‘Yeah they made the right call in that scenario’, we just have to do a better job of teaching the fundamentals of it, because everything comes down to fundamentals and technique.”
As you can see in the video below, Sirianni is right — the defender does run into Ward. As Sirianni explained as the coaching point, however, Ward doesn’t do a great job slowing down and trying to avoid the contact, which is why it was probably the right call.
The bottom line is the penalties have to stop. The Eagles season could look a lot different right now if they were cleaner in the red zone. They escaped Carolina with a win on Sunday, but to turn that win into one that helps them make a push into the playoffs, they are going to have to clean up the penalties — which falls on both the coaches and the players.
You can reach Eliot Shorr-Parks on Twitter at @EliotShorrParks or email him at esp@94wip.com!
