Repeat offender?!?!?!

Here is what I think is getting lost in the mix of the hit on McCoy. Harrison was flagged/fined at least 3 times last year for legal hits that NEVER should have been flagged, let alone fined.

So now he does commit a penalty (yes, I think the hit on Colt should have been flagged and fined) and is wrongly labeled a repeat offender. This should realistically be offense number 2 maybe in two years and DEFINITELY NOT worthy of a suspension.
:godell:

 

I don't know that this is true, but I would love to see the breakdown on tape of each of the fined hits over the past say 5 years.

 

They just showed all of the JH hits on ESPN two days ago. Several were questionable at best but it really doesn't make any difference now. It's not like you can go back and change the ruling on those calls now with any kind of new appeal. It is what it is. They were called and as a result JH is a repeat offender.

 

I just started a thread that had a question about repeat offenders lol. Maybe I should type faster.

 

5 times in the last 3 season for illegal hits on QBs = repeat offender. It doesn't matter if the previous flags/fines were legit or not.

 

Don't ya hate when that chit happens

 

So this is worthy of a 1 game suspension but that clown in Detroit only gets 2 games for stomping on a guy? At least JH was in the act of a play NOT after the whistle was blown. That asshat in office must go!

 

Considering Harrsion was told "Stop it" 5 times in the last 3 seasons and not only continued to do it but said he wasn't going to change the way he plays, what choice did Goodell have? None.

 

How can you say that? How does it not matter? The WHOLE reason he's being suspended is bogus. I'd say that matters. Suppose James Harrison is ruled down at the 1 yard line in the Super Bowl. Replay shows he got in but they don't overturn it. Does that not matter? Does it not matter that we got ripped off because the ref's word is final? Am I a whiny Seahawk fan if I say it should have counted and we got gypped? My God, it's not just about living with it and obeying authority. At what point does what actually happened matter to you?

I completely agree with the point the OP is making. I've studied all the hits carefully.

-The hit on Young was weird. He had Vince around the knees and lifted up. Keisel and Smith had him up top, and they were pulling him down. As a result, Young was flipped upside down. There was no whistle prior to the lift and no flag on the play. He was fined $5K.

My opinion: I still don't know, and I don't think the league did either. $5K is nothing. That's less than the guy who wore orange shoes got. The hit altogether looks excessive (and awesome), but if you just look at Harrison and what he did, it's hard to say he flipped him alone. If Smith and Keisel weren't there, it would have been a regular tackle. Very unusual circumstances, but I don't see how you can say Harrison did it alone. Overall I don't mind the $5K fine because it's so small it's as if the league was saying, "Yeah, uh... dont do that? I guess? I don't know." But it's a shame that it counts in his "strike count."

-The hit on Massaquoi was the big one ($75K, later reduced to $50K), and was total BS. Mass is doing a crossing route and gets a pass right to his head, can't catch it clean and bobbles it while he continues to run across the field. He takes 3 1/2 steps before Harrison gets to him. As he's dropping the ball right at the very last moment, he reaches down to his knees for it. His head drops about a foot or so, and as Harrison lays into him, his shoulder pad hits squarely against Mass's helmet.

My opinion: This is not Harrison's fault for two reasons. 1, Mass shouldn't have been defenseless. Who gets three and a half steps of "defenseless" protection? If he'd caught or dropped the ball cleanly, he could have easily slid or ducked or dodged and wouldn't have been hit at all. It was Mass's fault he bobbled the ball so long and did not protect himself. He had a choice to continue to try to catch it or protect himself, and he chose to go for the ball. 2, it was Mass's fault (or no one's fault, I'm not really trying to blame him) that he dropped his head by a foot in the hundredth of a second before impact. If he'd been running the same way that he had been all the way across the field, his helmet wouldn't have hit anything. There is no way JH could have anticipated that. In addition, JH got a lot of heat on this play for "hitting" Mass instead of "tackling" him. It's true, he didn't try to wrap up, he just checked him. My question is, so what? That's not illegal and it never has been. "Hitting" instead of "tackling" is most of the time inadvisable (AJ Hawk v. Lagarrette Blount) but if you can pull it off it's fine. It's not illegal. It's more powerful, if the circumstances dictate, and they did here. That should not be a factor. Most guys do this at some point during every game. For JH, it makes him a dirty player apparently.

-The hit on Brees was in fact a late hit. He's running around the corner, beats the block, Brees throws it and Harrison hits him anyway. I'm pretty sure he could tell the ball was gone. He went to strip it, so maybe he didn't know. His helmet hit Brees' back, but not his head. It was not a "full on" hit, probably 50%, but it was still too much given the amount of time that had passed.

My opinion: This should have been a penalty, but it's the kind of roughing the passer that you see all the time. I don't see the need for a fine, but given the way fines are handed out these days, it's somewhat consistent to give one here. $5K or $10K would be more appropriate than the $20K he got, but of course he'd already been fined twice this season (repeat offender status!)

-The hit on FitzPatrick is a mystery to me. Fitz throws it, Harrison times his hit perfectly. He is literally inches away at the time the ball leaves Fitz's hand. He nails him square in the body, from head on. Gets a $25K fine and a flag.

My opinion: I don't get this one. MAYBE the top of his helmet hit Fitz's beard, but that's about any head to head contact there might have been on this play. I simply don't see it. If there was H2H contact, it was so minimal that if Harrison wasn't wearing a helmet his head would definitely not have hit Fitz's chin, since he has no hair. He'd need at least a small afro to get there. Harrison's facemask hits Fitz right between the numbers. He wraps up with his arms and explodes with his legs. This tackle could be in a textbook. I can't believe it. As a side note, the referee had thrown the flag before the two even hit the ground. It is the fastest flag I've ever seen. At full speed it looks 100% clean, and in slow motion it is perhaps a little cloudier, but still shows no evidence of H2H contact. And yet the league still fined him. This one is apparently the league's way of saying "Don't hit them in the chest either."

-We all saw the McCoy hit.

My opinion: By the letter of the law I agree it's a penalty. In fact, this is the "worst" one of them all. For a guy with no record, I could understand something like a $15K fine. But McCoy's actions do in fact give Harrison the green light to light him up. But I can see that the crown of his helmet hits him in the chin and that's a penalty now.

So for me that's one run of the mill rushing the passer and one fineable offense over the last two years. Not newsworthy, let alone suspension-worthy.

 

Were Harrsion's previous fines successfully appealed? Only 1... the rest were not so according to the NFL, they were legitimate.

 

You got me there. I take it all back. The NFL is not wrong about anything.

 

This has nothing to do about being right or wrong. He was officially fined 4 times and by definition, that makes him a repeat offender. Just because we don't think the hits deserved a fine doens't mean they are ignored.

 

I never said the fines didn't happen. I know they happened and that they count. I have two points: they were all either partially or entirely bogus, and that should mean something. I am talking about what's right and wrong.

 

Has anyone ever considered the silence of the NFLPA?

Not once have they come to Harrisons defense in any of this.

To me their silence speaks loudly.

 

Let me try it this way. The fines officially happened which means the illegal hits officially happened. It doesn't matter if some Steelers fans think they are bogus. Multiple fines for illegal hits = repeat offender.

 

Won't quote the whole thing, but I agree with all of what you wrote there. The NFL disciplinary machine has now gone past the point of mockery into the realm of appalling.

"Don't hit them in the chest, either." F'n classic man!

 

That ones easy. The guys on the recieving end of these hits are also members of the NFLPA. And I suspect a fair percentage of the NFLPA membership think Harrison is a dirty player and are happy to have him punished. A lot of the membership don't see James as a victim.

 

Same here. I completely agree, but won't waste the space quoting the whole thing.

This isn't an opinion thing... it's getting to the point where my friends who are fans of other teams are agreeing that all this business is BS. You're 100% correct! Nobody is questioning the NFL's bogus stance on this, we're questioning the fact that it's correct... the fact that they are blatantly & unjustly handing out fines and suspensions.

Makes me think of the Cortland Finnigan fight... how the hell did that cat not get suspended!? They had a fist fight after the whistle and all that happened was they lost their lunch money!

 

And then theres Rolondo Mclain who was ARRESTED! for some type of aggravated assault with a firearm and he hasn't missed a beat,now that's crazy.

 

The last thing he said is "their silence speaks loudly"

I don't think this is a case of 49/51% thing. I would bet the players have a very unbalanced opinion on this as do nearly every fan of any other NFL team or sports fan that I hear weigh in on this.

On any sports radio I hear the only fans coming to his aid are Steelers fans but, many say they'd still want him on their team.

 

Can you say "scapegoat?"

 

If this has nothing to do with right or wrong what does it have to do with? Isn't everything we, as a human race, do based on right or wrong? I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with you or anyone else here, just raising a question. And that question leads to the question of who is policing the police here? Too much power for one person to have, in my opinion. To further my point, what exactly is your definition of the "NFL" because you have fans who review these hits over and over and don't see what Goodell saw, you have a few of the hits that weren't flagged by the refs on the field and you have a team that has not decided to discipline JH over the hits. To me, the fans, the players, the team management and commissioner all make up the "NFL" but the decision to fine and discipline a player, basically, rest on the shoulder of one person. Needs to be a better system for this type of stuff.

 

It has to do with Harrison being warned over and over and over and his public refusal to change the way he plays the game. It doesn't matter what (usually biased) fans see, it matter what Goodell and those who hear the appeals see.

 

He Plays by the NFL rules or gets fined, suspended and hurts the team. It is that simple. He was warned and did not care so now the team is without him for a game. Way to go James.

 

I know you're trying really hard to clear this up for me, but you just took a step backwards. If the NFL says it happened, it happened? Whatever the NFL says is fact? Can they change history? I get that my opinion doesn't change what happened, but the NFL's actions don't change what happened either.