As Eagles head coach Doug Pederson walked off the podium following Monday’s press conference, he admitted he hadn’t yet watched a replay of Ryan Mathews’ late fourth-quarter fumble and the Lions' recovery.
Without Pederson seeing it himself, it still appears as though the Eagles believe the ball hit Jason Kelce’s leg while the center was sprawled out of bounds. If it did, the play should have been dead and the Eagles should have retained the ball.
Instead, the Lions took over, picked up some yards and kicked a game-winning field goal in the Eagles’ 24-23 loss.
Pederson said the team will send tape of several plays to the league office – which isn’t uncommon – for clarification. The fourth-quarter fumble and recovery will very likely be one of them.
Pederson was asked for clarification on the rule if the ball was touching the leg of an out-of-bounds Kelce.
“It’s a dead ball out of bounds,” Pederson said. “That’s the rule. That was one of the things I wanted to make sure this morning, that I was correct and accurate in that ruling. It’s just one of those things. We can’t cough the ball up.”
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Pederson said he had spoken to the Eagles’ manager of football compliance John Ferrari about the play.
“We actually discussed it during the game because these situations come up throughout the league and we see video of this stuff all the time,” Pederson said. “And it’s obviously a turnover, so it’s a booth situation, booth review, and it’s out of our hands.”
Pederson said that after the review during the game, the explanation given to him from the referees was that the Eagles did not touch the ball.
That’s the same explanation the NFL’s senior vice president Dean Blandino gave in this Twitter video on Monday morning:
#PHIvsDET Several twitter questions re this review of recovery of a loose ball late in the game. #Eagles #Lions #UnderTheHood pic.twitter.com/21jdZk1sUV— Dean Blandino (@DeanBlandino) October 10, 2016
While the video from Blandino show most of the angles, it does omit this one, which PhillyVoice’s Jimmy Kempski provides as his definitive proof:
So this is the look where I believe you can definitively see the ball clank off of Jason Kelce's left ankle: pic.twitter.com/F5YkSC4JGo— Jimmy Kempski (@JimmyKempski) October 10, 2016
Yeah, it’s close.
Overall, the Eagles were penalized 14 times for 111 yards and at least a few of those calls were questionable. The Lions were penalized twice for 18 yards.
What did Pederson think about the disparity in penalties?
“We almost overcame it and won it,” he said, “and that’s a tribute to the football team, the way the guys battled.”
