Why Chip didn't challenge Polk spot

"Out, damned spot! Out, I say! - One, two. Why, then, 'tis time to do 't. Hell is murky! - Fie, my lord, fie!"

- William Shakespeare,

"MacBeth"

AN NFL SPOKESMAN said yesterday that the league doesn't keep track of how many challenges to where the ball is spotted result in the spot being changed.

Chip Kelly is under the impression the answer is not very many, and Kelly said the advice he got at the time and the coaches' tape view he has seen of Chris Polk's ramble from the Arizona Cardinals' 6 to somewhere inside their 1-yard line with less than 3 minutes left in a 24-20 Eagles loss Sunday doesn't definitively conclude the Eagles got a bad spot.

Many thousands of Eagles fans across the Delaware Valley would beg to differ on that last point.

The Fox replays show Polk straining toward the end zone after being hit around the 2. He ends up lying atop Cardinals safeties Tony Jefferson and Deone Bucannon, extending his arms toward the line. Polk said yesterday that what the replay shows reflects what he recalls - he's down only when his left forearm hits the turf. At that point, Polk seems to be swinging the ball over the goal line with his right hand, for a touchdown, or at worst getting it within a few inches of the end zone at the moment of left forearm contact, which should have meant a first down for the Eagles.

After he landed, zealous defenders pushed Polk back several inches. He then scuttled forward into the end zone, well after the whistle.

It seemed the ball was placed closer to where Polk was pushed back to, before his postwhistle surge, than where he initially landed. It's hard to clearly see a lot of the ball at the point where Polk touches down.

Adding to the confusion were unofficial yardage markers on the visitors' sideline visible in the freeze-frame views, which for some reason indicated the Eagles only needed to get to the 1 for a first down. Those had no bearing on the spot or the subsequent measurement, but if you didn't know they were unofficial, they would seem to provide absolute, no-doubt photographic proof that Polk achieved the first down.

Polk was at NovaCare yesterday to prepare for a Halloween-themed visit to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, to which he wore an "Incredible Polk" costume. He said he hadn't seen a replay, had only seen a still photo and heard "word-of-mouth" reports from teammates about the spot.

"From the picture, it looks like I was in. I remember a second effort. But I've got to see it on film," Polk said.

"This great game - it truly is a game of inches," Polk said. "Even with that call, we still [had a chance to win] with 1 second left."

However, had the Eagles scored a touchdown on that, their most time-consuming drive of the season - 7 minutes and 5 seconds elapsed, encompassing 13 plays and an Arizona penalty, 78 yards - they would have at least gotten to overtime, and very well might have won, since they would have only needed a Cody Parkey field goal to do so on their final possession, which ended at the Arizona 16.

Polk said he was under the impression the Eagles couldn't challenge the spot, and he "didn't feel it was my place" to raise the issue with Kelly, who was busy calling plays and adjusting personnel - including replacing Polk with LeSean McCoy on the subsequent third-and-inches. McCoy, running from the shotgun, was swarmed for a loss, the Cardinals' charge led by linebacker Larry Foote, who shot inside an already-engaged Jason Peters.

Kelly, who opted for a 20-yard field goal instead of going for it with 2 minutes left in a tie game, agreed yesterday that "in hindsight," a case could be made for challenging any play that might have been a touchdown. "There's also a chance that you need your timeouts," Kelly said.

Of course, the Eagles wouldn't have needed timeouts all that desperately, had they scored the touchdown there, instead of settling for the field goal. Everything inside 2 minutes is automatically reviewed, so saving challenges for later on wasn't a factor.

"It's gotta be conclusive, and I think that's the biggest situation that we're looking for, in terms are you going to use your timeout in that situation, use your challenge in that situation," Kelly said at his day-after news conference. "It's very difficult. I also know in this league, as it's been explained to us, spots aren't overturned very much."

On the McCoy run, "We did not stop the penetration up front," Kelly said. He also said the left side of the offensive line was late getting off the ball.

There was no new word on any of the injured Eagles. Chip Kelly, who noted that the o-line was "inexperienced and undersized" when trying to push the ball in at the goal line, talked about not rushing back center Jason Kelce (groin surgery). "We'll see how he progresses this week," Kelly said . . . Kelly was asked if the play in which Cards receiver Ted Ginn Jr. walled off Malcolm Jenkins from Larry Fitzgerald, springing Fitzgerald for an 80-yard touchdown, wasn't similar to the illegal pick play called earlier in the game against the Eagles. "Seems like it, when you look at the film," Kelly said . . . Kelly said right guard Todd Herremans left the final drive for three plays with an elbow problem, but returned . . . Brandon Boykin said after Sunday's game that he had tweaked the hamstring he injured a month ago at San Francisco. Kelly said yesterday he hadn't heard anything about Boykin being hurt . . . Asked about Deone Bucannon's helmet-to-helmet hit on Jeremy Maclin, in which Bucannon seemed to more or less head butt the Eagles' top receiver, Kelly deemed it "interesting."

Blog: ph.ly/Eagletarian