Eagles’ Haason Reddick calls out 49ers for ‘crying’ and ‘boo-hoos’

Philadelphia Eagles edge rusher Haason Reddick wants the San Francisco 49ers to put up or shut up.

After last season’s NFC Championship game, a 31-7 Niners loss, San Francisco embarked on a complainer’s tour, telling everybody who would listen that they would have won that game and made the Super Bowl if Brock Purdy didn’t get hurt. Deebo Samuel in particular led that charge into May.

When a reporter reminded Reddick of all this after the Eagles’ win on Sunday, asking the Philadelphia player if he had thought about those comments heading into the game, Reddick had a pretty simple message to his upcoming opponents.

“Talk is cheap,” he said. “They get to come back in the Linc. It was a lot of boo-hoos last year, a lot of crying, a lot of ‘what if,’ a lot of this, a lot of that. They get a chance to come back in here, line that s—t up, and prove it again.”

Reddick was the big reason why those complaints happened in the first place. His early sack on Purdy gave the quarterback the elbow injury that rendered the Niners’ offense useless. In the following weeks after the game, head coach Kyle Shanahan and running back Christian McCaffrey were among those in San Francisco’s camp calling for a rule change to allow a roster spot for an emergency backup quarterback. That day’s second string quarterback Josh Johnson was also knocked out of that game with an injury.

When a Philadelphia radio host asked Samuel in July “what happens” when the Niners and Eagles play this season, one of the last things Samuel said before hanging up on the host was, “I don’t know, just wait till Week 13, 12, whatever week it is, and we’ll show you.” As it turns out, he was just preemptively answering Reddick’s challenge before what might very well be the most important game of the Niners’ season.