Dirty Play: Cowboys’ safety is catching a lot of heat for how he tackled Eagles’ Dallas Goedert in Week 9

Brian Cass
November 8, 2023
Eagles
0 Comments

Whenever the Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys square off against each other, there’s bound to be some chippy plays throughout.

In their matchup on Sunday, Eagles tight end Dallas Goedert suffered a forearm fracture in the second half. Luckily, he’s only going to miss about a month’s worth of games, so the team should have him back in time for the postseason. Nevertheless, the injury could have been completely avoided if it weren’t for the way Cowboys safety Markquese Bell tackled him.

Dallas’ defensive back has gotten a lot of heat since the slow-mo video of his tackle on Goedert started popping up all over Twitter.

The Cowboys’ safety clearly pulls Goedert down by his arm here, causing the injury

Slow-motion video of Eagles TE Dallas Goedert’s broken forearm injury. Appears Cowboys safety Marquese Bell attempted to twist Goedert’s arm and he also fell directly on it upon completion of the tackle.

Goedert is expected to miss multiple games.

🎥: FOX29’s Starling Underwood pic.twitter.com/tqRfyy3FAP
— Josh Tolentino (@JCTSports) November 7, 2023

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I imagine Bell will face a hefty fine in the coming days for this play. D’Andre Swift was fined nearly $10K for just trucking a Washington defender two weeks ago, so there’s no way Bell comes out of this unscathed.

But in my honest opinion, I don’t know if I would classify this as a ‘dirty play.’ I’m not sure how else Bell would have been able to bring Goedert down, with the tight end’s hand all in his face like that. To me, dirty plays are when a player is intentionally trying to hurt another player. It’s hard to say if that was Bell’s true intentions here, or if he was trying to tackle him before he got into the end zone.

Regardless, I hate that it happened and if the general consensus is that Bell is a dirty player and gets penalized for this, then I’m good with it. I’m not about to sit here and defend him like my life depends on it. He’s a Cowboys player.