Malcolm Jenkins offered a refreshing response Monday to Terrell Suggs' low hit on Sam Bradford in Saturday's preseason game, giving an opinion that generated some controversy.
By now, you've seen the play a dozen times and read about it even more. Suggs dove at Bradford's knees early in the Eagles' preseason win over the Ravens on a play in which the QB handed the ball off out of shotgun.
Suggs, Ravens head coach John Harbaugh and NFL VP of officiating Dean Blandino all deemed the hit legal on the grounds that it came on a read-option play in which the quarterback has no more protection from officials than any other runner.
And while Chip Kelly, the Eagles' QBs and offensive linemen disagreed, saying it was a typical shotgun run in which Bradford had no option, Jenkins sided and empathized with Suggs.
"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," Jenkins said.
On Tuesday, after his comments to CSNPhilly.com were picked up nationally by ProFootballTalk, Jenkins expressed some displeasure on Twitter about how they were being construed.
Jenkins on Monday specifically explained he didn't mean that he'd go low at a QB like Suggs did. After all, there were two parts to the Suggs-Bradford hit: the hit itself on a QB not possessing the ball, and the area in which Suggs tackled Bradford. Jenkins wasn't referring to the shot at Bradford's knees, but rather the idea of using force to discourage a team from running the read-option.
"If somebody's running a zone-read and I want to scare them out of it," Jenkins said, "I'm gonna hit the quarterback."
NFL
Jenkins was referring to Part A of the hit and not Part B. He wasn't saying he'd deliver a borderline cheap shot like Suggs, he was saying he'd be aggressive going after the QB because a defender has a split second to determine who has the ball in the read-option. It's easy to watch from afar and criticize a defender or referee for misunderstanding the play, but the speed on the field in which it occurs is so much faster than any fan or analyst can comprehend.
So no, this was not a case of Jenkins being a bad teammate. He's one of the Eagles' leaders, and one of the most honest guys on the team.
If there's anything the Birds probably didn't love, it was Jenkins' going against the grain and saying the play was a read-option after Kelly repeatedly said it wasn't.
"It is a zone-read run," Jenkins said Monday. When told that Kelly disagreed, Jenkins laughed and said, "Well of course, according to the head coach."
Gamesmanship from Chip? Possibly. Highlighting the issue of read-option vs. typical shotgun run in the preseason could attune referees to the complexity of the distinction and alter how those types of hits are assessed when the games actually count.