November 26, 2023

Eagles' Haason Reddick, Josh Sweat say Bills QB Josh Allen lobbied officials to flag him for intentional grounding

According to Reddick and Sweat postgame, Allen wanted the penalty call so that Reddick wouldn't be credited with a sack.

By Jimmy Kempski
PhillyVoice Staff

Bill Streicher/USA TODAY Sports

Josh Allen is sort of sacked (but not really, I guess) by Haason Reddick.

With under two minutes left in the second quarter of the Philadelphia Eagles' 37-34 overtime win over the Buffalo Bills, the Bills had a 2nd and Goal from the Eagles' 3-yard line. Haason Reddick wrapped up Josh Allen and tossed him to the ground, but Allen flipped an underhanded throw just before he landed on the turf.

Allen was called for intentional grounding and a loss of 13 on the play. It otherwise would have been a loss of around 10 or 11 yards, depending on where the officials would have determined Allen's forward progress was stopped. According to Reddick and fellow edge rusher Josh Sweat, Allen lobbied the officials for an intentional grounding penalty to take the sack away from Reddick.

"That's some bulls***, and he did it on purpose," Sweat said. "The f***ing dude literally begged [the officials] for intentional grounding to not f***ing take a sack. He f***ing begged for intentional grounding just to not give us a sack. It could've been a fumble, and you'd f*** your team at that point. How the f*** do we get penalized [in the stat sheet] for him getting a penalty? Don't f***ing take my sh** away. It's too hard to get there."

Reddick corroborated Sweat's claim.

"He was lobbying for an intentional grounding," Reddick said. "If that doesn't tell you what that means... they gotta start counting that as a sack. They're just throwing the ball away with nobody in the area so they don't get a sack. We rush well. They already don't want us to get any sacks after we had 70 last year. They don't want us to be who we are.

"There's no benefit. They actually lost more yards on the intentional grounding than they did on the sack."