By Jalen Carter,Jimmy Kempski
Copyright phillyvoice
In their Week 3 win over the Los Angeles Rams, the Philadelphia Eagles blocked a pair of field goals. One was blocked by Jalen Carter; the other by Jordan Davis, who then recovered the kick and housed it for a 61-yard touchdown. Let’s take a closer look at each kick to see how the Birds stole a win.
Blocked kick No. 1: Jalen Carter
In the Eagles’ regular defense, Davis lines up closest to the ball as the nose tackle. On the kick block unit, Carter lines up closest to the ball. In fact, Carter tries to line up as close to the ball as possible, but within the rules.
All players lined up on the line of scrimmage must have their entire body outside the snapper’s shoulder pads at the snap. If they don’t it’s an illegal formation. As you can see pre-snap, one of the officials gives Carter a little pat on the butt to tell him to move further away from the long snapper. He seems fine to me where he was originally lined up, but whatever.
At the snap, Carter wants to shoot the gap in between the long snapper and the guard (Kevin Dotson, 69). Carter is quicker than Davis, so that’s why he’s in that spot. Again, he’s trying to line up as close to long snapper as possible within the rules.
At this point in the game, the Rams have already kicked six field goals or PATs, and Carter has the timing down. It looks like he’s taking off as soon as he sees the holder pat the ground (which of course is the holder’s communication to the long snapper that he’s ready for the snap). Carter times out the snap perfectly, shown from the sideline view:
The rest is technique. Carter plows into Dotson with his right shoulder and because he has timed out the snap so well he knocks him back. He then throws up his left hand and jumps. It bounces off of Carter’s hand, and into Davis’. Outstanding.
Carter has gotten a bad reputation for committing dumb penalties, and rightfully so, but he is also a very cerebral player in a lot of subtle ways.
Blocked kick No. 2: Jordan Davis
On the second blocked kick, the Rams had different personnel in the game. Dotson had gotten hurt earlier in the game, and Beaux Limmer (50) was in his spot.
Once again, Carter got a jump at the snap, though not quite as good as the first blocked kick:
Carter and Davis drive Limmer back, and Limmer kind of hops to reset his base. That’s a no-no. His foot lands right behind Rob Havenstein’s ankle.
When Havenstein tries to step back he lands on Limmer’s foot. Havenstein trips, the whole left side of the Rams’ line collapses, and it looks like Davis actually gets two hands on the ball. But it’s all set up because the combined force of Carter and Davis — especially with Carter getting a great jump — was too much for a backup lineman to anchor against.
And then should we watch Davis’ return at 2x the speed? Sure, why not?
Anyway, the short-short version of this article is that Jalen Carter and Jordan Davis are physical beasts.
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