The Eagles improved to 5-0 after Matt Ammendola shanked a 43-yard field goal in the dying moments that would have tied the ballgame at 20 and likely sent it to overtime.

Preceding the kick was a bit of brain fart and/or controversial moment, when Arizona QB Kyler Murray was ruled to have slid short of the sticks, resulting in him spiking the ball on 3rd down and forcing the kick on 4th:

https://twitter.com/keimica/status/1579262130335150080?s=20&t=7RHWIkvEwDXrmjAVRgucfQ

Keith is wrong here. The rule is that when a quarterback gives himself up, he is considered down as soon as any body part hits the ground, or even if there’s a simulation of that.

This is how it’s written in the NFL rulebook:


An official shall declare the ball dead and the down ended… when a runner declares himself down by:

sliding. When a runner slides feet or head first or simulates sliding, the ball is dead the instant he touches the ground
with anything other than his hands or his feet, or begins to simulate touching the ground;

Here’s another screengrab that I was able to pull, which shows you the exact moment he slides and gives himself up:

If you look at the image I used at the top of the story, you can see that Murray’s leg is NOT touching the ground, and he is, indeed in the air. But it doesn’t matter, because the refs correctly ruled that he gave himself up and began his slide prior to crossing the 1st down threshold. You can’t perform a track and field-style long jump and gain extra yardage because of the way they wrote the “giving yourself up” language into the rulebook. Otherwise, QBs would take advantage of defenders not being allowed to hit them, and would abuse their protections in order to gain cheap extra yardage. They did a good job with this rule when it was added to the book.

Bottom line, it was the right call. Kyler Murray had a brain fart and backed up his kicker. If they had picked up the first, spiked it, and ran 1-2 more plays there, you’d be looking at something like a 30 to 35-yarder instead of a 43-yarder. Maybe that would have been the difference between overtime and a regulation Birds win.