Dan Daly of the Washington Times is convinced that the Dallas Cowboys purposely played dirty against the Philadelphia Eagles in their 41-37 win on Monday night. More specifically, Daly talks about the three times Dallas defenders grabbed Eagles’ RB Brian Westbrook’s facemask and it was never called.
What a coincidence, too, that he’s the Eagles’ best offensive player, a back who led the league in yards from scrimmage last season (2,104) and gained 299 of those yards in two games against Dallas. It couldn’t possibly be that the Cowboys’ defensive coaches spent the week telling their players, “We have to be physical with this guy if we’re going stop him. [Wink, wink.]” I mean, when has a football coach ever suggested that?
If you ask me, the Cowboys are taking this “Hard Knocks” business a little too literally. Football is a nasty game, sure, and people are going to get hurt, but there’s never been any place for trying to yank a guy’s head off.
And make no mistake, there was nothing inadvertent about any of the episodes, nothing incidental; if there had been, the defenders (Jason Hatcher, Pat Watkins, Jay Ratliff) would have released the mask sooner. No, this was just good, old fashioned Street Ball – Oakland Raiders, circa 1976.
The no-calls Daly is talking about definitely should have been penalties. The first time Westbrook got his facemask tugged, his helmet almost spun around to where he would be looking out his ear hole.
I think part of the problem is that the league did away with the 5-yard incidental facemask penalty. Now they’re all 15-yard penalties, so refs are gun shy to blow their whistle because they want to make absolutely sure that the guy had malice while grabbing the facemask. Thus, more facemask penalties are being missed this year than in previous seasons. (And the calls haven’t just missed in the Dallas-Philadelphia game; missed facemask calls are happening all around the league.)
Or maybe Daly is right and the Cowboys are just plain ol’ dirty.
