Apparently some players on the Philadelphia Eagles may have been yelling "Papa John's!" at the line of scrimmage when Peyton Manning went into his "Omaha! Omaha!" audible calls / mock-pointing-out-defensive-short-comings during yesterday's game.
I didn't hear it, but plenty of people did apparently.
One blog post even went so far as to title itself:
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NFL Peyton Manning Papa John's Denver Broncos Peyton Manning And The Broncos Gave Papa John's Free Advertising During A Play Against The Eagles
So what was the real deal?
Eagles LB Connor Barwin talked to 94 WIP today and confirmed someone on the defense may have said it but likely they were just yelling whatever to try and confuse the Bronocs. If you saw any of the game, clearly the pizza ploy didn't work.
News
“Well I know—I think I might have heard Papa John’s once, but I don’t know who said it, I mean that’s kind of funny,” Eagles linebacker Connor Barwin told 94WIP’s Michael Barkann and Ike Reese on Monday. “When any quarterback goes and talks at the line or any center, they start yelling ‘Mike’s 59′ or ’98′s the 4th down’ where they try to figure out the protection, we, on defense, we start, like I’ll say—if they start yelling ’98′s down, meaning I’m the fourth rusher, I’ll start yelling ’59′s down’ because it just confuses them. We can say, we tell the referee that we’re changing who our fourth is upon what they say. So that kind of stuff happens all the time when quarterbacks are making calls and defenses are trying to make calls back.”
I'm starting to think that free advertising thing may have worked better than the Eagles ploy for confusion. Because now I'm hungry.
So not only did the Eagles defense make it fairly easy for Peyton to earn the win on Sunday, they also probably helped him earn a couple extra dollars (pennies?) on his Papa John's franchises.
