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Last Thursday night in Cleveland, Ohio, millions of football fans nationwide witnessed one of the most stunning and horrific endings to a football game in the history of the sport and the NFL. ast Thursday night in Cleveland, Ohio, millions of football fans nationwide witnessed one of the most stunning and horrific endings to a football game in the history of the sport and the NFL.
Sitting in front of their televisions for Thursday Night Football, or for the highlights, they watched in disturbed awe as Myles Garrett, a rising defensive end for the Cleveland Browns, ripped the helmet off of Pittsburgh Steelers QB Mason Rudolph’s head and proceeded to bash him in the head with it during a brawl. It was an intentionally committed act with gruesome possibilities, all cut up by the offender to a simple “loss of cool”.
A game’s ending which should have been characterized by a home crowd's celebration of a surprising, hard-fought win, instead was marked by a violent episode that nearly required stadium security to break up.
In the days since the primetime incident, especially on Friday, there has been criticism from some inside and outside of the sports world regarding Mason Rudolph’s involvement in the incident and his deserving of a suspension from initiating it. There seems to be a lack of understanding as to why Rudolph did not receive a punishment for his actions in the scuffle when even his teammate, Maurkice Pouncey, did with a three-game suspension.
For anyone who is erring on the side of those questioning the inequality of the NFL’s reprimanding, thought must be given to the focus of the league in responding to this incident and handing out specific suspensions. That focus is to take necessary action to keep acts of violence out of the game, and that violence came from Myles Garrett in this instance.
What the Browns defensive end did to the opposing quarterback, no matter if the actions were fueled by a primetime rivalry game or a loss of cool, was unforgivable and at a level arguably never seen before in the NFL.
Football has always been a sport of toughness, aggressiveness, and playing hard until the referee blows the whistle, but this does not include the removal of another player’s helmet and using it as a means of taking out an opponent. Turning a protective device into a weapon to inflict harm, for any reason, is completely reckless and invokes violence.
Mason Rudolph, as certain critics attest, certainly had some skin in the game, but in no way as much as Myles Garrett. Replays of the brawl would show Rudolph pulling at Garrett’s facemask to initiate the scene but that was merely a mode of self-defense against a player laying over him after a late hit. It is true that pulling facemasks is something the league tries to avoid which is why it is considered a penalty, however in this instance it was not reckless and did not warrant the reaction from Garrett.
As Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield simply put it, what Myles Garrett did on the field was “endangering the other team”. There were multiple outcomes that have befallen Mason Rudolph from being hit with a helmet, including serious head injuries and possibly a loss of consciousness which the rookie had already suffered once in a previous game.
Very few instances in NFL history even come close to being on the same tier of severity and violence as the Rudolph-Garrett brawl, as one sportswriter put it. Two moments that do are the Albert Haynesworth incident in 2006 and Ndamukong Suh stepping on the leg of Aaron Rodgers in 2014.
The NFL was not concerned with handing out suspensions to every player involved in the brawl, and they shouldn’t have been. Numerous skirmishes occur almost every Sunday, most if not all less serious than Thursday night’s, and the league does not go around suspending every player involved in each one.
If they were to do so, it would create an uproar with the players but also, in the instance of the Steelers-Browns brawl, make the instance seem normalized and take away from its severity. What was important was reprimanding violence and protecting players from unnecessary harm.
The NFL wanted to make a statement about their distaste for violence and voice their concern for taking care of players. Football has always been dubbed as a violent sport, however when it comes to violence of this kind, especially when the league is emphasizing attention to player brain health, there is no place in the game for it.
That is what we saw with the indefinite suspension of Raiders linebacker Vontaze Burfict this season, the three-game suspension of Maurkice Pouncey for punching Garrett during the brawl, and the currently indefinite suspension on Myles Garrett that will at least end his 2019 season and whose length will ultimately be the longest in history. The NFL wanted to ensure that a moment like this never occurs in a league game again.
The Steelers-Browns brawl on Thursday Night Football and its aftermath had everything to do with Myles Garrett and acts of non-football related violence. Such acts ruin the integrity of the game and taint the image of the NFL, so kudos to Roger Goodell and the league for how they have already responded to such events.
