I’m tired of seeing defensive players trying to get on the ESPN highlights by making tackles with collisions rather wrapping the ball carriers up.
Everybody has talked about the awful tackling which we saw by the Eagles against the Giants, this past Sunday night, but nobody gets to the reason for it.
In the last twenty years, ESPN has had a huge affect upon the business and culture of sports in our country and around the world.
The professionals players in all sports look at their Sportscenter show religiously.
Some of that influence has been good and some of it has been bad. In this case it has been bad.
Many times the cable sports network highlights the great collision tackles which end with the ball carrier knocked out and the ball loose.
They’ll talk about the noise the hit made and how vicious it was, but they don’t talk about how many times it fails.
They didn’t talk about the many times good runners will bounce off those collisions and keep on running as we saw with New York wide receivers Hakeem Hicks and Domenic Hixon, who each broke collision tackles by the Birds and turned them into long touchdown plays.
Yes sometimes those collisions cause fumbles and great highlights for the defense but too many times, they wound up being highlights and great plays for the offense.
Eagles defensive coordinator Sean McDermott should demand that players wrap up when they tackle and he should refuse to accept anything less.
I think the Eagles defense is much better than their performance against the Giants, but if they continue the poor tackling that claim will seem to be false.
Defensive lineman and linebackers can miss tackles and all that occurs will be a 15 to 20 yard play, but onceyour cornerbacks and especially your safeties start missing tackles, it results in long touchdowns and 30, 40 and 50 point games.
The Eagles defensive players need to know that if they continue winning they’ll be on ESPN plenty enough.
