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J. J. Watt is very upset with the amount of fines issued by the NFL to players during the 2023 season. The retired defensive end, a three-time Defensive Player of the Year who played for 12 seasons, took to Twitter to argue that the league is going too far with their penalties.
The play in question was a block from Baltimore Ravens fullback Patrick Ricard in a game against the Arizona Cardinals, when he sustained a block until running back Gus Edwards found the end zone. The Ravens won that game 31-24 in Week 8.
In J. J. Watt's point of view, the league should absolutely keep fining players for malicious hits and real unnecessary roughness plays, but they shouldn't discount a player's salary for a regular football play, even if they deem that sometimes a block was a little exaggerated:
J. J. Watt hates the NFL's fine policy
In more recent years, the league has shifted some of its rules to protect quarterbacks even more, which has made the job of defensive players even harder. Even though a pass rusher's job is to get to the quarterback, the NFL now places a different set of rules on how to hit - imagine thinking about this in real time.
J. J. Watt was a dominant force in the league back in the day. He was named the Defensive Player of the Year three times during his first five seasons, and he was literally unstoppable back then - in 2014, the second time he won the award, there was a real discussion about whether he deserved to be named MVP instead of Aaron Rodgers.
The league understands that, if they want to attract more money and viewership, then quarterbacks would be the star of the show. But over-protecting them also makes the game less fun in many ways, and there were plenty of controversial roughing-the-passer calls over the last three years - and to be fair, the block from Patrick Ricard is nothing more than a regular block.
It's easy to see why J. J. Watt wants to defend players from being fined due to unnecessary roughness - the league sometimes steps a bit too far with its rules. And it ruins some of the game's magic.
