Crossing Broad
Shout out to Bo Wulf for asking about the Tyler Steen penalty from Sunday’s Eagles game. The second-year lineman was flagged for unnecessary roughness when he came into a scrum “late” and tried to push the pile forward. I put “late” in quotation marks because I swear that the official was already pulling out the flag before the contact was made, when the whistle was slow to begin with. But the way Nick Sirianni explains it, the flag didn’t have anything to do with the whistle at all (my emphasis in bold) –
Q: I don’t mean to get you in trouble here. The G/T Tyler Steen penalty after the whistle, if somebody had the opinion that maybe the referee should have blown that whistle earlier, and that was the real reason for that happening, would somebody be onto something?(Bo Wulf)
NICK SIRIANNI: I went in there (this week) and talked through that and reestablished what the rule is there. One thing we really pride ourselves on is those extra yards we get when we push the pile. So, you preach everyone running to the football and everyone hustling to the football.
So if anything happens, like the ball comes out on the ground, they’re there for that. But also, to be able to push the pile and get the extra yards. And you saw it against the Giants last week, where Saquon had the ball and was probably stopped at about the two yard line, but everyone got behind him and pushed the pile into the end zone. We scored a touchdown off of it.
That’s happened a bunch. We talk about that a lot. And our guys play so hard, and their effort is what it is. We have benefits because of our guys and the way they play and how hard they play.
So now, the rule is that if I’m right behind you, I can get in there and push. But if I’m building up a head of steam and putting my back into the pile, that’s what they don’t want.
So, I get why they called that. I know why they called that. I know why Tyler was trying to get up there and push them further because we praise that.
To be honest with you, sometimes you’re like, ‘Do you want them to blow the whistle?’ It’s sometimes yes, sometimes no. I didn’t want them to blow the whistle in the Giants game because we were able to push the pile forward to get the touchdown.
Had I’ve been able to tell we were going to get a penalty for that, I would rather them blow the whistle there.
The way Sirianni explains it, you can’t build up a “head of steam” before pushing the pile, which would mean the timing of the whistle is irrelevant. I guess if Steen is less forceful getting up to the scrum and/or...
