During Sunday night’s Super Bowl loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, the Philadelphia Eagles had a ton of success with the quarterback sneak, converting all six of them for a first down thanks to a controversial tactic where players lined up behind quarterback Jalen Hurts and pushed him across the line of scrimmage. But they might not be able to use that tactic much longer.
According to former NFL rules analyst Dean Blandino, the league’s competition committee is expected to discuss the tactic during their meetings in two weeks, and he said he would be “shocked” if the NFL didn’t institute a rule change.
Blandino compares this potential rule change to another rule change that happened several years ago.
“If you remember on field goals and extra points, they used to be able to push the defensive linemen into the formation,’’ Blandino said, according to the33rdteam.com. “You would find the weak link on the offensive line. [The offensive line] would have their legs interlocked. And you would get two, and sometimes three, defensive linemen, and two linebackers all pushing into that player. We got rid of that.’’
It would be a big change – this tactic has been legal since 2005 – but Blandino thinks it would be relatively simple to implement.
“[Outlawing it] on sneaks is easy,’’ he said. “The downfield stuff, you just put the tape together, show it to the officials and you just start calling it. That’s the key. To desensitize it, you’ve got to throw flags. I don’t think it will be a major issue.’’
We’ll have to see what the NFL does this off-season. But it’s clear that if the league doesn’t make changes, plenty of coaches will use this tactic next year.
