The hit that didn’t injure Eagles quarterback Sam Bradford but that has ruffled plenty of Philly feathers has created a separate point of contention unrelated to the behavior of Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs.
Coach Chip Kelly says the play wasn’t a zone-read run, meaning that Bradford wouldn’t have emerged from the action of putting his hands into the stomach of running back Darren Sproles with the football. Via Jeff McLane of the Philadelphia Inquirer, multiple Eagles players say that it was a zone-read play.
The best evidence of a zone-read run, as McLane notes, comes from the fact that Suggs wasn’t blocked. The “read” portion of the zone read flows from the reading of the unblocked defender and the making of a decision as to whether the ball will be actually given to the running back after the defender commits to pursuing the running back or the quarterback.
Via McLane, Bradford also says it wasn’t a zone-read play, adding that the quarterbacks discussed on Monday the impact of their body language following a handoff on whether they will be absorbing an impact.
For a quarterback who doesn’t want to get hit, the task is to quickly make it clear that the quarterback is no longer in possession of the ball. Pretending to emerge from the exchange with the ball continues to make the quarterback fair game -- in the same way Brett Favre’s one-time habit of rolling out of a handoff and feigning a jump pass made him fair game.
Of course, for the Suggs hit on Bradford, the quarterback’s body language didn’t matter. Suggs applied the hit an instant after Bradford completed the handoff. And it doesn’t matter whether Bradford was actually reading the defense before making a decision on whether to keep the ball; he and Sproles executed the handoff in a way that looks like Bradford was reading the action before deciding what to do. That makes it permissible for the unblocked defender to decide to hit Bradford.
