When the Eagles recovered an onside kick in Sunday’s miraculous comeback win over the Giants, they did it despite having just 10 players on the field.
Or maybe they did it because they had just 10 players on the field.
Giants special teams captain Chase Blackburn said the Eagles’ ploy of having one player run off the field before the onside kick got the Giants confused, and that the Giants’ kickoff return team was busy counting the number of Eagles on the field instead of focusing on the task at hand.
“They did something good,” Blackburn said. “They ran a guy off right in front of everybody and they’re all looking at each other saying, ‘We’ve [only] got 10.’ So we’re doing the same thing, trying to recount. And then you forget about that ‘alert’ a little bit. That’s kind of what happened.”
Giants coach Tom Coughlin, who has been widely criticized for not having his hands team on the field when the Eagles tried the onside kick, was not pleased that his players were distracted by the Eagles’ trick.
“That should not have been any kind of distraction,” Coughlin said.
But according to Blackburn, it was enough of a distraction that it turned around one of the biggest games of the season.