Jerome Boger, the referee in the Eagles' Week 2 preseason game against the Ravens this past Saturday, called a penalty on Terrell Suggs for his hit on QB Sam Bradford after Bradford had handed the ball off in the first quarter. Roughing the passer was the ruling.
Dean Blandino, the NFL's head of officiating, said Monday morning on NFL Network that the play was "not a foul" and that no penalty should have been called. His reasoning was that on a zone-read play the quarterback is subject to being hit just like any other runner.
A few hours later Monday, Chip Kelly agreed with Boger and disagreed with Blandino, saying the play was a typical shotgun run, not a zone-read. Bradford did not have an option on the play, Kelly said. It was the same as any other shotgun run in any other offense.
Here's a defensive player's take on the situation, and it differs from what Kelly and many of Bradford's Eagles teammates said Monday:
"If I take myself out of an Eagles uniform, I'd probably do the same thing (as Suggs)," Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins said.
Before you freak out, no, Jenkins did not mean he'd attack a quarterback's knees. He did not mean he'd try to send a message with a cheap shot. He meant that if he was facing an offense known for running the read-option, he'd try to nail the quarterback to eliminate that threat from the playbook.
"As a defender, my way of scaring you out of that run concept is hit your quarterback," Jenkins said.
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But wait … Kelly said it was not a zone-read run. What concept was Jenkins referring to?
"It is a zone-read run," Jenkins said. When told that Kelly disagreed, Jenkins laughed and said, "Well of course, according to the head coach.
"I'm just saying as a defender, if I was gameplanning for the Eagles, I probably wouldn't go low for the quarterback, but that's where there's a little bit of discretion from a player's standpoint of where you hit somebody.
"But if somebody's running a zone-read and I want to scare them out of it, I'm gonna hit the quarterback."
Jenkins said that when facing a dual-threat QB like Colin Kaepernick or Robert Griffin III, he always assumes the quarterback is running until he sees the ball in the running back's possession.
He bases it around the offense he's playing.
"If I'm playing the Patriots, everybody knows that Tom Brady's not running the zone-read," Jenkins said. "So it'll get called different than an offense where 50 percent of our snaps are zone-read. So I think there's a little bit of discretion in there."
Discretion was the word of the day at the NovaCare Complex. The NFL's officials will have to figure out what is and is not a read-option and clearly define it for coaches again. Kelly said Monday that Blandino sends out a video to all coaches after each week explaining rule interpretations and questionable calls.
Kelly said the Eagles don't run the read-option any more than the Seahawks or 49ers. But sometimes perception is all that matters, and it could be a big problem for them (with a quarterback coming off two knee surgeries) if teams and refs assume they're running the read-option whenever they run the ball out of shotgun. It might lead to more hits on Bradford and more rulings by the NFL that the hits are legal.
"Mike Vick and RG3 got that treatment their whole careers," Jenkins said. "That's just how I see it."