Eagles safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson needs to be better at controlling his emotions. He needs to learn a lesson from being ejected from Sunday's game, forcing his team to play nearly all of the second half without him.
His absence was costly as the Commanders scored 22 points in the fourth quarter to steal a 36-33 win from the Eagles to prevent them from clinching the NFC East title. Whether CJGJ does learn that lesson doesn't seem likely, sending out this tweet following a 36-33 loss: "Respectfully got kicked out for nothing, I play with passion and fire!! Guys was chirping all day what u expect!!:
Not beinga vaialble for your teamamts is unexcusable and he shouldn't have put them in that position.
That said, referee Shawn Smith deserves some scrutiny for what happened. Somehow, the referee thought it was a good idea to call an unsportsmanlike penalty on the Eagles safety after it was Gardner-Johnson who had his helmet dislodged following a punch by the Commanders' Dyami Brown that landed under Gardner-Johnson’s chin.
The punch happened directly in front of Smith, but instead of calling a personal foul on Washington’s receiver, he called Gardner-Johnson for an unsportsmanlike penalty. It was his second of the game and that meant he was automatically ejected.
His first was never shown on replay. It came on the final play of the first quarter. The second came with just over 11 minutes to play in the third quarter.
Smith was asked about his call by a pool reporter after the game.
The refs answer went like this: “He’s basically taunting the opponent on the second foul. He already had a first one earlier in the game that we had announced as his first toward disqualification. So, this became his second. He was taunting the players so that’s a disqualification by rule.”
It is a subjective call, and Smith deemed that Gardner-Johnson was taunting, though never really going into detail exactly what that entailed.
The pool reporter then asked Smith if there should have been offsetting fouls in the play, a legitimate question since it looked like Brown threw a punch.
“Well, we only had the one foul,” said the ref.
Again, that is subjective, and Smith’s opinion was that Gardner-Johnson crossed the line. There’s no question Gardner-Johnson is a physical player who can talk trash but throwing a player out – something that rarely happens – seemed to cross the line, especially in a game between two rivals inside the NFC East. Especially when Brown threw a punch and got away with it.
Eagles safety Reed Blankenship was in the vicinity when the helmet flew off after Brown’s punch and he said he didn’t hear anything from Gardner-Johnson. Of course, they are teammates, so maybe not hearing anything wasn’t entirely true.
“He didn’t say anything at all,” said Blankenship. “I was right there. When you’re on a hot spot, things happen. At the end of the day, I had my dude’s back. Next man up.”
Blankenship said nothing changed when Gardner-Johnson departed, yielding to Tristin McCollum.
“Nothing changed,” he said. “Nothing’s gonna change regardless. We’re all in the same meetings. We all ask the same questions. I thought Tristin did a really good job. When CJ went out, I just went up to Tristin and said, ‘Don’t think, just play.’”
Head coach Nick Sirianni chose not to comment.
“I’m not going to get into any conversations I have with the referees or the players,” he said. “They called what they called.”
Smith called two personal fouls against other Eagles, flagging Jalen Carter for pushing a Commanders player over after Nolan Smith had recorded a sack to give Washington a first down. Also, Milton Williams was flagged for a roughing the passer penalty on what looked like a legal push on Daniels right after the QB delivered a pass.
“We talked about it on the field right there as it happened,” said Sirianni. “If I didn’t get it fixed, that’s going to be on me. They got to be better in those scenarios and I need to be better in those scenarios to help them out.”
The Eagles were penalized 10 times for 91 yards. Washington was hit with six penalties for 93 yards, three of which were pass interference calls against cornerback Marshon Lattimore trying to guard A.J. Brown for 69 yards.
