I am on record saying that I don’t like Jackson playing around by the goal line.
Once you score you can do whatever you like until then you are playing with fire. I was going to give Jackson the benefit of the doubt on his punt return TD, because initially I thought he was trying to run out the clock until he basically said he was showboating and if you didn’t like it too bad.
The NFL has made a big deal about “sideline conduct” and if they were playing closer attention to Jackson’s showboating it could have cost the Eagles the game.
As the Philadelphia Eagles return man was running parallel to the end zone, delaying his touchdown for maximum showboating effectiveness, a number of his teammates ran onto the field from the sideline, a clear violation of the NFL’s “too many men on the field” rules.
The new wrinkle on Jackson’s return was first noticed at BallHyped.com. Because he took a turn at the 6-yard line instead of running into the end zone, a number of his teammates and some coaches spilled out onto the field in anticipation of his touchdown, which didn’t come until a few seconds later. A flag could have been thrown, bringing back the touchdown and sending the game to overtime.
If you want to really nitpick, flags should have been thrown on both the Eagles and the Giants since Tom Coughlin was out on the field yelling at his punter at the same time. It would have been offsetting penalties and a re-kick would have been ordered.
I have no problem with the refs keeping their flags in their pocket, nothing that happened on the sideline effected the play, but if only one official decided to be a stickler for the rules we could have had a whole different outcome.
The point is if Jackson keeps playing with fire, he will end up like Ron Mexico.