James Harrison Says Myles Garrett Would Get ‘at Least a Year’ in Jail if Mason Rudolph Incident Happened Off-Field
Completely inexcusable
Ken Blaze/USA Today Sports
Myles Garrett is going to be off the football field for a very, very long time after what he did to Mason Rudolph at the end of last night’s Browns-Steelers game.
It doesn’t look as forceful in slow motion but you can see that Garrett made solid contact with the top of Rudolph’s head.
A football helmet is an extremely dangerous weapon to be swinging like that, especially if you’re somebody as big and strong as Garrett. It’s a wonder Rudolph wasn’t seriously injured. He could have easily fractured his skull.
Players around the league, current and former, had a wide range of reactions to the incident. Some were disgusted, others simply bewildered.
Former Steelers linebacker James Harrison said what many people outside the game were saying: Garrett’s actions would have been criminal in any other context.
When James Harrison thinks you’ve gotten too violent, you’ve definitely gotten too violent.
Harrison was one of the meanest linebackers of his era. Every hit he delivered was meant to be punishing. He prided himself on making the kind of brutal contact that has been made illegal in recent years as the NFL becomes more concerned with player safety.
Harrison felt so strongly about his right to knock dudes out that he threatened to quit football when the league instituted a rule protecting “defenseless players” in 2010. After Harrison concussed Browns receiver Mohamed Massaquoi with a vicious helmet-to-helmet hit and was fined $75,000, he went on the radio and said he was going to “see if I can actually play by NFL rules and still be effective” or else “I may have to give up playing football.”
But what Garrett did isn’t football. Harrison is right. If you get into a fight at a Dick’s Sporting Goods on Black Friday, take a football helmet off the rack and hit a guy in the head with it, you’re going to get arrested.
Uhhh, sure. Why not?
After nearly a year on the sidelines, Carmelo Anthony has landed another job in the NBA.
Melo kinda stunk in Oklahoma City and in his abbreviated run with the Rockets but if he learned in that time that his best chance to be a successful player is as a bench scoring option good for one or two offensive outbursts per game then maybe this will work.
With the Warriors in shambles, the West is as wide open this year as it has been ages. Melo has never won a ring, and playing a complementary role alongside Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum could strangely be his best chance at one.
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