Philadelphia Eagles safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson played his first three NFL seasons for the New Orleans Saints, with Dennis Allen as the defensive coordinator.
Allen is now the head coach of the Saints, and on Monday, he disputed Gardner-Johnson’s assertion about dirty play by New Orleans after the Eagles’ 15-12 victory on Sunday.
Saints defensive tackle Khristian Boyd blasted DeVonta Smith hard enough to knock off the Philadelphia wide receiver’s helmet and put the former Alabama All-American into the NFL’s concussion protocol.
“Man, that’s the dirtiest (expletive) I ever saw in football, bro,” Gardner-Johnson said. “Ya’ll obviously saw that forward progression was stopped. They’re going to take a cheap shot on one of our key players, it goes to show you what type of team that is.”
Boyd’s hit wasn’t the only one that angered the Eagles. New Orleans offensive tackle Trevor Penning rode Darius Slay far out of bounds on a block, causing the Philadelphia cornerback to leave the game.
Boyd was not penalized for his hit. Penning drew a flag for unnecessary roughness.
“I’d say our guys play extremely hard, and we’re going to compete until the down is over,” Allen said. “I don’t think we play dirty. I don’t think we ever have played dirty. It’s not the way we coach it, not the way we teach it. But we do play hard. Look, nobody wants to see anybody get hurt. Nobody’s trying to hurt anybody. And, unfortunately, that’s part of the business that we’re in. But, no, we don’t play dirty. We don’t coach dirty. But we do play hard, and we do play physical.”
Allen did not defend the Penning play.
“We can’t have that,” Allen said. “You’ve got to have some awareness of where you’re at on the field. That could’ve been a really costly penalty. I love the aggressiveness, but at the same time, we can’t hurt our team.”
At his Monday press conference, Eagles coach Nick Sirianni declined to say if he had turned in Boyd’s hit to the NFL for review.
“I never am going to challenge anyone’s integrity,” Sirianni said. “Those guys are out there playing as hard as they possibly can on both sides of the field, and so I’m never going to question that. And I think their guys don’t want to get too much into the play, but everyone was playing hard on that play. And I love Smitty, and I’m really sad that that happened to him and not only that he got hurt on that particular play. And just hoping that he’s recovering, continuing to recover here.
“But that was a tough play to watch on film.”
Sirianni did not provide an update on Smith’s condition.
The Eagles also lost wide receiver Britain Covey because of a shoulder injury on Sunday and already were playing without wide receiver AJ Brown, who has missed the past two games because of a hamstring injury.
Philadelphia plays the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at noon CDT Sunday at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida.
The Eagles have two healthy wide receivers on their active roster – Jahan Dotson and Johnny Wilson. Philadelphia also is carrying four wide receivers on its practice squad – Parris Campbell, Danny Gray, Kyle Phillips and Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint.
Those six wide receivers have combined for six receptions for 36 yards this season. Brown, Smith and Covey have 33 receptions for 392 yards and two touchdowns in 2024.
“We’ll see as the week goes on,” Sirianni said about Philadelphia’s wide-receiver situation. “We’ll see who’s going to be available. We’ll plan for everything. Like I said from the very beginning, I really have a lot of faith in this room and that wide-receiver room. You know, we have Johnny. We have Parris. We have Jahan. I know Jahan hasn’t had a ton of catches, but I think he’s been playing efficient football, and sometimes it’s just a matter of seeing it and then, you know, going out there and planning some more things for him and doing some more things to get the ball in his hands.
“Then we got some practice-squad guys that are working hard, and we’ll see how this all plays out. But I got a lot of faith in the room. It can look a lot of different ways, right? So I have a lot of faith in that tight-end room. And I have a lot of faith in the running-back room as you look at the skill positions. And so a lot of different things you can do. Obviously, really early in game planning, and I probably wouldn’t share it with you anyway as far as what we’ll do there. But we got options, that’s for sure, just because we feel good about the work that these guys have put in and the players and the teammates that they are.”
