Haason Reddick Perplexed Over Roughing the Passer Rules

The Eagles' best pass rusher talked about two debatable penalties in Week 5 games have opened up another debate on what constitutes roughing the passer

USA Today

PHILADELPHIA – Haason Reddick is perplexed.

His job is to sack the quarterback. He is the Eagles’ best rusher after five games, with 4.5 sacks. He has had 23.5 of them in the last two years, which is the fifth-most in the league over a two-year span.

It’s his livelihood to sack the quarterback. It’s what earned him a three-year contract from Philadelphia in the offseason worth potentially $45 million.

It’s the NFL’s job is to protect the quarterback, even to the point of throwing penalty flags for roughing the passer on what appeared to be two relatively benign hits on the quarterback in two Week 5 games.

First, there was the sack Atlanta’s Grady Jarrett had on Tampa Bay’s Tom Brady on Sunday.

Second, there was the Monday night flag on Kansas City’s Chris Jones for stripping the ball away from Las Vegas quarterback Derek Carr then landing on top of the QB with the football in his hands, not in Carr’s.

“Here I am trying to get to the quarterback, so you want me to take time to think about how I’m going to tackle him or bring him down to the ground?” Reddick said on Wednesday as the Eagles prepare to play the Dallas Cowboys Sunday night in primetime.

“In this league now, we have QBs that scramble really, really well. Like, if I’m trying to do my job, I can’t…that’s a split-second…(snaps fingers). As soon as I touch him he could go down like that and the play might be over, so how can I have full awareness on what my body is doing, especially in today’s league?

“...I can’t be sitting around thinking how I’m going to approach a tackle on a QB because he’s a QB. What if I’m trying to figure out how to do it, and now he breaks out of it and he’s scrambling down the field for 20 yards or he threw a deep bomb because I’m worried about not getting a penalty?”

It’s a conundrum to be sure, so much so that even Las Vegas has released odds as to whether roughing the passer penalties will be reviewable next season.

The Associated Press reported that NFL owners plan to discuss the roughing-the-passer rules at their league meeting next week in New York, though there is no guarantee that any rule changes will be forthcoming.

“I think there’s a balance with it,” said Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts on Wednesday. “Obviously, I want to be protected back there. But those are things that I really can’t control, so I just kind of let them do their job.”

Right now, though, especially after those two Week 5 games, and probably after what happened with Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa that led to new concussion protocols being added, roughing the passer has become a gray area.

Reddick was asked by SI Eagles Today if he would change his approach until the gray area clears up if it ever does.

“I can’t sit here and say that,” he said. “I don’t want to get fined, either. I don’t want to be a guy that gets penalties and does any damage to the team. I don’t have an answer for you as far what I can do to change. I haven’t gotten one of those calls, yet so I’m not really complaining.

“Evidently something I’m doing is kind of right. Maybe I just try to continue to go for the strip sack. I really don’t have an answer as to what can change, what I can do. All I can do is to try to go out there and give my best effort and hope for the best.”

Reddick does know this: “The fans want to see us go out there and play football, so let us go out there and play football.”

Ed Kracz is the publisher of SI.com’s Fan Nation Eagles Today and co-host of the Eagles Unfiltered Podcast. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles or www.eaglesmaven.com and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.