Should the NFL ban this play? Yes or no
For me.....I'm on the fence but how the hell to stop it? I don't see how unless you have TWO powerful bodies in the middle and that's probably not enough. Their coach was bragging about his offense plays 1 and 9 which the rest of the league is playing 1st and 10.
It’s interesting that Philadelphia’s most consistent offensive weapon right now is the quarterback sneak. Can anyone argue with that? I can’t—not after going four-for-four on it Sunday night. Now 55 of 61 in less than two seasons, it’s easy to understand why Sirianni changed his mind on going for it with 10 minutes left and a seven-point lead in his own territory.
I’ve wondered for a while about the effect of the sneak on the players. Jason Kelce riffed about it, getting to how it actually feels to be in the middle of the mayhem.
“You’ve got to get very low and have great leverage to have a chance for it to work,” he said. “Miami was doing a really good job of fighting the leverage, but I mean, that’s only one component. For us, if you keep your feet moving and you keep pushing, that’s how to succeed. Plus, every time you run it, it gets harder and harder to defend, because it takes so much energy and effort for the defense to muster up to stop it.
“It’s a grueling play. It’s hard to describe because it’s not a high-impact play. You know you’re so close to guys. When you think of big hits, and hits that like, you know, really rattle guys, you think about receivers over the middle, guys just getting blindsided. Typically, when you’re right up against somebody, you don’t have time to build up momentum. There’s a hit but then it’s a continuous like effort to push and grind and it takes a lot out of you. It’s a very draining play. At times, people are lying on top of you. It takes forever to get them off of you and get up. It’s not what I’d call fun. It’s a very grinding play. You feel that for sure.
“The good thing for us is, we know how to run the play and we have a way to get to it at the line. A lot of that play just comes down to who can get organized faster. When you’re able to hit it really with like not a huddle of any sort, and the defense has to get ready to play it right away, the chance that they’re gonna be able to organize as quickly as you are, is even lower. When you know you’re gonna do it, it’s better just to get on the line and do it rather than get in the huddle and come to the line and then they get a chance to talk about how they’ll defend it.”
The key to defending it—if the Eagles win by leverage of continually churning legs—seems to be leverage on the other side plus continual churning of legs on defense. But if you don’t practice against it, it’s tough to play it for the third or fifth time and stop it—when the team you’re playing has done it more than 60 times in-game, with a high rate of success.
