jenkins

This morning on Twitter, Malcolm Jenkins tried to clarify that he, regardless of what NBC Sports says, isn’t out there hunting zone read quarterbacks. Of course he’s not. That’s one way to get yourself marked a dirty player and earn a bunch of those flags and fines he mentioned. So where does this even come from? From the mouth of Malcolm Jenkins.

Jenkins is quoted by NBC Sports as pretty much saying that exact thing (when you fill in the gaps). Jenkins told CSN’s Corey Seidman:

“I’m just saying as a defender, if I was gameplanning for the Eagles, I probably wouldn’t go low for the quarterback, but that’s where there’s a little bit of discretion from a player’s standpoint of where you hit somebody. But if somebody’s running a zone-read and I want to scare them out of it, I’m gonna hit the quarterback.”

Of course, he clarified, saying that it depends on which team is running the play. “If I’m playing the Patriots, everybody knows that Tom Brady’s not running the zone-read,” Jenkins explained. “So it’ll get called different than an offense where 50 percent of our snaps are zone-read.” Jenkins did say more than once, however, that he would not go low on the QB.

It’s all fair. Jenkins is right. The quotes in both pieces are the same. So what’s Jenkins’ issue? I’d guess it’s the headline. Here’s CSN’s:
suggs

And parent company NBC’s Pro Football Talk:

target

They’re a bit different, no? Jenkins told CSN he gets why Suggs did what he did, even if he shouldn’t have hit low. Pro Football Talk makes him sound like a headhunter. The same story in both cases, but two very different headlines give them different feels. And Jenkins obviously prefers one to the other.