NFLVideo

Bucs Coach Greg Schiano Is Ready To Run Out The Clock On Run-Out-The-Clock-Gate

Tampa Bay Buccaneers is ready to move on from the faux controversy from the end of last week’s game against the New York Giants. In case you somehow missed it, the Giants are upset because Schiano instructed his players to try to strip Giants quarterback Eli Manning as Manning tried to take a knee to end the game, which apparently resulted in some supposed cheap shots at the expense of Manning.

Nevermind that if you actually watch the video, all the Bucs do is push Li’l Eli over.

Regardless of whether or not the Giants’ butthurt-ness was warranted, Schiano is ready to put the issue to bed.

“I’d like to move past this right now,” the first-year NFL head coach said after fielding a couple of lingering questions about the incident that arose at the end of Tampa’s Week Two game against the Giants. “We have a big game with the Cowboys, but I do want to clear it up because I respect the game of football too much, and that’s a play that’s in our playbook.

“We line up. We’re not diving at knees. We’re not doing any of that stuff. There’s techniques that are used to try to jar the ball loose and to have guys in position to recover it. As I’ve talked about before, we’ve done that in the past and actually created a fumble C-Q exchange four times in the past four or five years. It does work, if executed properly, and there’s some tricks to it that you’ve got to do.

“But certainly it’s about clean, hard football and trying to win a game. If the game was out of reach, we wouldn’t use it. It’s strictly about winning games. I want to make that clear. This game’s been too good to me and too important, and I don’t ever want anyone to perceive it as a lack of respect of anyone or anything.”

Good for Schiano. And shame on the Giants. You guys have won two Super Bowls in the Eli Manning era. You should know something about doing whatever it takes to win games.

[Pro Football Talk]

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