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UPDATE:
While Rex Ryan won't confirm, Albert Breer has now reported what we originally believed.
I'm told Jets coaches did alert officials to several things to watch for w/Pats' special teams, inc potential FG push, before Sunday's game.
— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) October 21, 2013
Kudos to Rex and the Jets, who were clearly aware of this coming into Sunday's game. And on the other side of the issue, shame on Belichick and the Patriots for attempting to get away with a rule violation for consecutive weeks.
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Sunday afternoon a penalty was called against the New England Patriots that very few people were even aware existed. But were the Jets ready for it?
We have cracked the code on the FG mishap. New info as to how the jets may have alerted the refs as to what the pats were doin. Do not miss!
— Gresh (Tweets) & Zo (@GreshandZo) October 21, 2013
New York guard Willie Colon told Newsday Sports after Sunday's game that New England had been warned multiple times about pushing earlier in the game. But now it appears there was a reason for that.
Via @GreshandZo, a Boston-based sports talk show, the Patriots ran this exact field goal push play against the New Orleans Saints in Week 6.
Not only that, but upon further review, it was Chris Jones doing it again:
It's mostly speculation, but the fact that New England has done this multiple times with the same player tells me that Bill Belichick is specifically running this play, whether he knew it was illegal or not.
There was a lot of confusion in the aftermath of Sunday's game as fans and Belichick claimed that the play they had run on the field goal was legal. A great deal of confusion for the fans was due to an improper interpretation of the rule on NFL.com. While it was believed that the rule only applied to players not lined up on the line of scrimmage, it has now been confirmed that the ruling applies to any player rushing the kick. Belichick has since admitted that the referees made the proper call.
Whether his brother Rob Ryan alerted him or he saw it in the film, it appears that Rex Ryan was prepared for this play to happen again. It seems quite possible that this was the case, and they may have even alerted the referees prior to or during the game. As you can see in the GIF above, the back judge was positioned perfectly to make such a call, which he saw immediately. If that is indeed what happened, Rex and Co. deserve big-time praise for doing their research in order to benefit from what turned out to be a textbook proper call.