Why Colts LB Zaire Franklin didn’t look back on key pass interference penalty vs. Eagles
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Indianapolis Star 24 mins ago Joel A. Erickson, Indianapolis Star
Colts lose to Eagles 17-16
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INDIANAPOLIS — If Zaire Franklin could do it over again, knowing everything he knows now, he would have turned to look for the ball.
Franklin has been so good for the Colts this season, but he’d been beaten deep by Eagles running back Miles Sanders on a key third down to start Philadelphia’s final drive in a 17-16 Colts loss.
As he tried to chase Sanders down, all Franklin was trying to do was prevent the touchdown.
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“I saw his eyes getting big, so I knew the ball was coming,” Franklin said. “I was just thinking: Go. Try to make a play on the ball. Best-case scenario, I break it up. Worst-case scenario, if it’s a flag, it’s not a touchdown, and we’ll just be able to line up and play. I love us in the red zone.”
Franklin has been a revelation for the Colts this season, stepping into the gap left by the injuries to All-Pro Shaquille Leonard and playing excellent football.
The veteran linebacker was good again for most of Sunday’s game. Franklin finished with 12 tackles, a half a sack that knocked Philadelphia out of field goal range on a first-quarter drive and a forced fumble on A.J. Brown that kept the Eagles from capitalizing on Jonathan Taylor’s fourth-quarter fumble.
But he’d taken a chance early in the third-down play as Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts scrambled, and Sanders made him pay.
“Honestly, I had the back,” Franklin said. “(Hurts) was looking for (DeVonta) Smith on the hitch route. I jumped (the hitch), he didn’t see it, scrambled out right, and the back flared.”
Franklin knew he was in trouble.
“I ain’t gonna lie, that’s a fast player, and he was already like 10 yards ahead of me, so I was just already running,” Franklin said. “When he started slowing down, that’s when I should have paced it down, tried to turn around. It’s easy, after the fact, to think about, ‘I should have done this.’”
Franklin thought the ball was going out in front of Sanders for the go-ahead touchdown.
Hurts’ ball was, instead, a bit underthrown, forcing the Eagles running back to slow down, and Franklin ended up tackling Sanders before the ball arrived, drawing an obvious pass interference penalty that gave Philadelphia 39 yards and a key first down to set up the game-winning touchdown by Hurts.
“At the moment, high RPMs when you’re caught out of position, I was just running, trying to make sure I didn’t give up the touchdown,” Franklin said. “Worst-case scenario, I liked us being able to line up and play against them anywhere.”
Franklin was betting on a Colts defense that already had a stop in a goal-to-go situation, albeit a stop aided by a snap over Hurts’s head in the second quarter.
Indianapolis instead gave up the game-winning touchdown on a 7-yard draw up the middle.
“All things equal, as a defense, you want to be in that moment, you want to defend the lead and win the game,” Franklin said. “Unfortunately, we didn’t do that. I didn’t do that. I’ve just got to be better next time.”
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Why Colts LB Zaire Franklin didn’t look back on key pass interference penalty vs. Eagles