C.J. Gardner Johnson and Ref Go Nose-to-Nose: Eagles’ Safety Heated Exchange Sparks Controversy

Eagles safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson needs to be better at controlling his emotions. He needs to learn a lesson from being ejected from Sunday’s game, forcing his team to play nearly all of the second half without him.

His absence was costly as the Commanders scored 22 points in the fourth quarter to steal a 36-33 win from the Eagles to prevent them from clinching the NFC East title. Whether CJGJ does learn that lesson doesn’t seem likely, sending out this tweet following a 36-33 loss: “Respectfully got kicked out for nothing, I play with passion and fire!! Guys was chirping all day what u expect!!:

Not beinga vaialble for your teamamts is unexcusable and he shouldn’t have put them in that position.

That said, referee Shawn Smith deserves some scrutiny for what happened. Somehow, the referee thought it was a good idea to call an unsportsmanlike penalty on the Eagles safety after it was Gardner-Johnson who had his helmet dislodged following a punch by the Commanders’ Dyami Brown that landed under Gardner-Johnson’s chin.

The punch happened directly in front of Smith, but instead of calling a personal foul on Washington’s receiver, he called Gardner-Johnson for an unsportsmanlike penalty. It was his second of the game and that meant he was automatically ejected.

His first was never shown on replay. It came on the final play of the first quarter. The second came with just over 11 minutes to play in the third quarter.

Smith was asked about his call by a pool reporter after the game.

The refs answer went like this: “He’s basically taunting the opponent on the second foul. He already had a first one earlier in the game that we had announced as his first toward disqualification. So, this became his second. He was taunting the players so that’s a disqualification by rule.”

It is a subjective call, and Smith deemed that Gardner-Johnson was taunting, though never really going into detail exactly what that entailed.

The pool reporter then asked Smith if there should have been offsetting fouls in the play, a legitimate question since it looked like Brown threw a punch.