The Eagles beat the 49ers so hard the NFL had to change its rules
The NFC championship game was one to forget for the San Francisco 49ers. But now we'll always remember it as the day the Eagles changed the game.
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Following an NFC championship game in which the Eagles knocked both San Francisco 49ers quarterbacks — Brock Purdy and Josh Johnson — out of the game, the NFL is taking measures to ensure that if it happens again, it won’t lead to the debacle that unfolded at the Linc in January.
On Monday, at the NFL’s spring meeting in Minneapolis, the league voted to make a change to its current rule regarding the use of emergency quarterbacks, or quarterbacks who don’t count against a team’s “active” game day roster.
Right now, there is no rule limiting the number of active quarterbacks a team can dress for a game, but most teams around the NFL — although they carry three — only make two active for the game, trading that third quarterback spot for a player who is more likely to see the field, even if only on special teams. From 1991-2010, the NFL had a rule in place that allowed teams to activate a third “emergency” quarterback if the first two went down, however doing so prohibited either of those first two QBs from returning to the game.
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In the wake of the Eagles’ drubbing of the 49ers, the Detroit Lions proposed the rule change that would see the NFL return to a similar format. This one allows for the starter or backup to return if he’s eventually cleared by team doctors.
Here’s the language from the NFL on its new rule:
Each club may also designate one emergency third quarterback from its 53-player Active/Inactive List (i.e., elevated players are not eligible for designation) who will be eligible to be activated during the game, if the club’s first two quarterbacks on its game day Active List are not able to participate in the game due to injury or disqualification (activation cannot be a result of a head coach’s in-game decision to remove a player from the game due to performance or conduct). If either of the injured quarterbacks is cleared by the medical staff to return to play, the emergency third quarterback must be removed from the game and is not permitted to continue to play quarterback or any other position, but is eligible to return to the game to play quarterback if another emergency third quarterback situation arises.
A club is not eligible to use these procedures if it carries three quarterbacks on its game day Active List [47- or 48-players in 2023].
The majority of NFL rule changes were voted on back at the league’s annual meeting in March, but at the time they decided to table this specific rule until the spring meetings.
This is probably the part where Eagles fans want to get a bit nostalgic, and we’ll indulge you.
First, here’s a look at the Haason Reddick hit that temporarily knocked the starter Purdy out of the game and put the Eagles on the road to victory.
We say that Purdy, who actually tore the UCL in his throwing elbow on the play, only left the game temporarily because he was forced back into action after his backup, Johnson, was knocked out of the game with a concussion early in the second half.
That’s the real thing the NFL is trying to prevent here — a team’s clearly-injured quarterback being forced back into the game because their only other option is turning the star running back into a QB.
Of course, Eagles fans will simply say that’s none of their problem. Get better blocking. Protect your quarterback. Stop complaining.
But there’s another way to look at it: The Eagles defense might have come up a few sacks short of the single-season record, but they were so fearsome, that they forced the NFL to change its rules.