SI.com's Peter King writes letter of caution to NFL players

Dear Players,

On Saturday night, the NFL scheduled a major television event for the marquee game of the first playoff weekend. A rivalry game, with intense feelings between players and cities, featuring one of the great franchises in American sports, the Pittsburgh Steelers...

LINK: http://pit.247sports.com/Bolt/SIcom-Peter-King-writes-letter-of-caution-to-NFL-players-42766036

 

I think he pretty much nails it, but it will largely fall on deaf ears.

 

I'm sorry, but I'm sick of hearing about the shazier hit. Big hits still happen legally, get over it. It's not flag football yet. And Joey Porter being on the field is the same thing that happens during any major injury, it's just a big deal because of the out of control emotions of the bungles.

The rest of the article is more or less on point, but I'm sick of them playing this like it was an equal thing. The bungles and their fans were literally out of control the whole night and nobody outside of Pittsburgh seems to give a **** about any of it except the burfict part.

 

I stopped half way and all I could think of was STFU....

 

I agree 100% with Harristotle. I'm also tired of hearing about the Shazier hit. It was violent & I never like to see ANY player get knocked out. But it was LEGAL.
I wasn't thrilled with what Munchak did. Whatever it was, it wasn't a push. Ppl can say what they want about Porter but what we didn't see was the 9 Bengals coaches that were also on the field. Joey shouldn't have been in their huddle, I'll give them that.
In all honesty, I think our players acted better than they did in the Week 14 game. Besides DeCastro's "block", no one else really did anything. Even Kody Wallace kept his temper in check.

 

Joey was pushed into the huddle. He was walking off the field with Brown and the trainers and then this...

http://thesteelersfans.com/forums/t...n-and-what-the-bengals-did.13784/#post-370815

All this sucks because the Bengals are the dirty team and they made the Steelers look bad. In the end I'll always cheer GO STEELERS!

 

It's funny that you posted that. When I got the alert that you quoted one of my posts, I was posting in that thread that I sounded stupid because I didn't see Joey being pushed into the huddle. I was too busy watching the trainers take AB off the field.

 

Yeah Peter King, getting the government involved will fix the NFL. They fix everything they touch. Yeah right. They can continue to water the game down until it's glorified flag football but the owners and players better get used to a lot more modest lifestyle. There's no way they can charge the kind of money they do now for pretend football. It ain't gonna happen.

 

By the letter of the law Shazier's hit really could have gone either way I think it was more clean than dirty but I'm biased. We will see really soon. If he gets fined it should have been a penalty if he doesn't it was clean.

 

I agree. I watched it at a Steelers bar with two Bengals fans. When they showed the slow-motion replay, I could see Shazier lowering his head and driving into Bernard with the crown. The contact looked more to the chest/shoulder area to me, but there was contact to Bernard's lower facemask as well. Based on that facemask contact, I thought it could have gone either way, and I wouldn't really have been able to argue against a call if they'd flagged it. But it just as well could have been deemed incidental contact to the head, since (to my eyes) Shazier hit him more in the chest than the head.

And yet ...

I disagree. The NFL routinely levies fines on hits/conduct that didn't draw a flag. I don't know that they say, or that we should interpret the fine as saying, "it should have been called, it was illegal". I view fines more as messages to the player, as in "don't do that any more; it was borderline; you better clean up your technique/act". In Shazier's case, he does need to improve his technique and stop lowering his head.

 

The above quote is from King's article. Although I agree players should "just say no" to "plays like that," they, as well as the League, should be pushing to get guys like Burfict banned from the League. Burfict isn't going to change. He is a mean, evil man. It's in his blood. "Plays like that" will only stop when guys like Burfict are no longer permitted the honor of playing in the NFL.

 

It's a fairly sensible letter, but one that each coach should have already let their team know.

What we saw on Saturday night was an elevated antagonism, heightened by scheduling, between two teams, meeting the unfathomable complexity of the rules of the game introduced around tackling, that half the fans don't understand, and the other half interpret in different ways.

Yes, both teams should have reeled it in. Yes, the game is not one I'd want to watch again. But the mass dissection after the match has highlighted how even the so-called 'experts' seem unable to cover the complex aspects of the game. For example, the idea that Brown was 'faking it', when the penalty had nothing to do with that. For example, the focus on Shazier's hit as comparable with Burfict's on Brown, when the situations were completely different (which is not to say Shazier's was legal or not; but the listing of the two together as somehow off-setting is silly). For example, overlooking Green's false start - or, for balance, the holding that we got away with on several plays.

So you've got a high emotion match that was decided by complex rules that are often open to interpretation. No wonder everyone's so angry. But don't just aim that at the players.

 

Is he really trying to suggest in some way that the Steelers' behavior in that game should be viewed on the same moral footing as the Bengals' classless behavior? Seems that way to me.

 

That's the way it looked to me too. But I must a homer cuz I ain't buyin' it!

 

Sigh.......exactly dude.

 

Maybe somebody has done it and I missed it but I would like to see if the Bungles had only the "qualified personnel" on the field when Bernard got hurt. I wonder if they would then whine about that if they didn't?

 

I seriously had somebody come up to me today to tell me they couldn't believe how "dirty" the Steelers were and that they were shocked that I would root for such a "scumbag organization". I was like "Yeah that thug Munchak in his high wasted khakis is a real gangsta". They said "Did you not see the Porter thing???" I said "Yeah when he got bumped in the back while not saying anything? Of course I saw it." Two things are amazing to me. First off, people that know me STILL really don't understand my devotion to this team and how that I watch every single play and rewatch plays and do constant research on players and things like that. So how would I have NOT seen the Porter thing a million times? Second, it is also amazing how the media can frame a narrative that people will believe without question based on a 10 second Sportscenter "highlight". I guess it's just the world we live in now but it's really sad.

 

I agree with Dick King on this part of it. There should be some respect between the players. And for the majority of players there is. I don't think the dirty, cheap shots are good for anyone. And those are usually done by the same individuals. But how are the other players supposed to police these guys? They can only control their own actions. But you get the few who don't care about anything and go prison yard on the field. And when one of these numbskulls gets pancaked or beat fairly, what do they do? Attempted foot stomp, spit on a player, etc. The refs and league are supposed to intervene in those cases.

You can argue the leagues effectiveness. Did Pac Man get a flag or a fine for slamming A Cooper's head into the turf vs Oakland? Yet on others, fines/suspensions are escalated for repeated violations. For the most part, the league tries to get the thing right. OBJ was suspended as he should have been.

Why doesn't King write a letter to the NFL network who replayed the game if he wants to stop the negative repercussions? Maybe he should send a patchouli scented post it to espn and nbc sports so they stop showing the fights and cheap shots. Breaking news...there are idiots in the NFL and they'll hopefully get enough fines and suspensions to where they stop getting chances. But sometimes even the good guys can only take so much (Andre Johnson and Cortland Finnegan).