It’s Time For Roger Goodell and the NFL to Chill!
Saturday, November 06, 2010
Goodell took over for Paul Tagliabue in 2006 and made it clear at the time that he wanted to “clean up” the image of the NFL by holding players to a higher standard both on and off the field. And while he has been somewhat successful in that endeavor, he has also overstepped his bounds. Kudos to Polumalu for calling him out.
The latest controversy to hit the NFL has to do with what they call “illegal” hits. A few weeks ago there were a few questionable hits across the league.
The Patriots Brandon Merriweather was fined, and rightfully so, for an illegal helmet-to-helmet hit on Baltimore’s Todd Heap. The Steelers’ James Harrison was also fined for an illegal hit on Cleveland’s Mohamed Massaquoi. Atlanta’s Dunta Robinson also felt the wrath of Goodell when he was fined for his hit on Philadelphia’s DeSean Jackson.
All of those fines, it can be argued, were handed out for good reason. But now Goodell has gone too far.
Yesterday we learned that New England’s Myron Pryor was fined $7,500 for his hit on Brett Favre that knocked the Vikings quarterback out of the game in the 4th quarter. Anyone who watched that play knows that it was a clean hit. There was nothing illegal or dirty about it. The result wasn’t pleasant for Favre, but there was no intent to injure on the part of Pryor.
Polamalu’s comments come in defense of his teammate Harrison who was fined another $20,000 this week for an late hit on Drew Brees bringing his season total to $100,000 in fines. It’s the third time Harrison has been fined by the league even though he was not penalized for 2 of the 3 hits.
It’s starting to get ridiculous!
I completely understand the need to protect the health of these players so that later in life they don’t suffer memory loss to the point where they can’t remember what they had for breakfast. But Goodell the dictator has to know when to stop.
He is the commissioner of a tough and physical sport played by big, strong, athletic men. There are going to be hard hit. Extremely hard hits! There are going to be injuries like the one Favre sustained from the Myron Pryor hit. However, that does not mean that there have to be fines for every hard hit that results in injury.
If it were up to him, quarterbacks would wear their red practice jerseys in games so that they didn’t get hit. Better yet, maybe he’d have them tuck flags in their waistbands and apply the rules of flag football to them. No, I’ve got it! Put pinks skirts on the quarterbacks because no one would hit someone in a pink skirt.
Goodell and the NFL took a serious issue a few weeks ago and have run with it much too far. Now every hard hit is being closely scrutinized and, even worse, unjustly punished.
Is Goodell punishing the act or the result of the act? It sure seems like the latter in the case of Myron Pryor. And it just isn’t right.
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