Doug Pederson spoke Sunday and Monday, so today it was Jim Schwartz and Mike Groh at the dais for their weekly press conferences.
Notes from Schwartz:
Schwartz was also asked about the bevy of flags being thrown for roughing the quarterback, in specific reference to the new rule that disallows defenders to land with their weight on top of the player:
“Yeah, you know it’s a difficult thing. First, you’ve got the strike zone where you can hit him. You can’t hit him in the head and neck area and you can’t hit him in the knee area, so you have a very short target area there. You saw one last night where a guy is trying to bat a pass and just hits a guy in the head. You’ve just got to stay away from stuff like that. It’s difficult, but I think what you’re referring to is the whole new layer of landing on a guy with your weight. And again, you talk about a difficult thing, you’ve got guys who are fighting a 300 pound offensive lineman and trying to get to the quarterback, not sure if the quarterback’s going to get rid of the ball, not sure if he’s not. We have an increase of scrambling quarterbacks – strong, scrambling quarterbacks – and we’ve seen them get out of our grasp before and you gotta tackle ’em, but then make sure you don’t land your weight on them. It’s the only player that we have that (rule) for. It’s not our job to make the rules, it’s our job to figure out a way to play around them. I don’t know if it can always be done. I think you can work to do it, you can try to spin out of your tackle. You can try to keep your weight from landing on a quarterback. It’s not always going to be possible. That’s life as a defensive lineman. Just like you’re trying to block a pass and your hand goes down and you scrape the quarterback’s helmet. You’re not trying to do that. Nobody is trying to do those things. They’re just trying to increase protection for the quarterback. But I think the double side of that is that as they’re trying to increase protection for the quarterback, we’re seeing more mobile quarterbacks, which makes it even more difficult, because you have to tackle them like running backs… these guys are mobile, they’re fast, they’re strong, and they’re becoming more like running backs. That’s what makes it so difficult.”
This is the play Schwartz is referring to:
Roughing the passer!
Anyway, Mike Groh: