Steelers Typical Dirty Play

[Whatever]

(09-28-2018, 06:58 AM)JS-Steelerfan Wrote: I think your case would be stronger if you documented the exact cases to which you refer to the league apologizing.  

Also ... wasn't the disproportionality based on prior player history?  And weren't the Rivers and Huber plays during a time when those things were less penalized in general?

The first major one is Huber's broken jaw and neck. That wasn't really a grey area call.  It was illegal to hit a defenseless player with the crown of the helmet in the head or neck and kickers and punters are always considered defenseless.  What's worse is that the NFL's explanation was literally that the refs forgot that the punter is defenseless by rule.  It's possible that they did forget, but when the other team scores a TD on play where one of your guys gets his neck broken on an illegal cheap shot, it's tough to swallow.

The other two come from that Wild Card body bag game.  Martavius Bryant's TD was ruled to be not a TD after the game and of course they admitted Joey Porter should have not been allowed on the field.

James Harrison was suspended after being fined 4 times for illegal hits.  It was that brutal hit on Colt McCoy that got him suspended.  This is just my opinion, but the reason he was suspended was the violence of the hit and the fact that McCoy going back into the game put a really bad light on the league's concussion protocols.  Burfict was fined 8 times before being suspended, but only 3 were for illegal hits.  He did have plenty of dirty post whistle incidents on his resume like bag tags and ankle twisting, which I'm certain played a factor.  I think that, again, in Burfict's case it was the violence of the hit combined with Brown's stature as a player and the fact that 3 of his previous fines were against the Steelers prompted the suspension.  

In my personal opinion, Burfict is a dirty player and deserved his suspension, however Mike Mitchell was a serial headhunter that skated by without discipline.  My issue was with the NFL scheduling the Steelers as a divisional opponent during that suspension and Burfict being turned into the total whipping boy for every dirty thing both teams have done during the rivalry.  I think that alleged league bias aside, it's much easier to paint it as one player being out of control rather than 2 teams being out of control.  The rivalry has been out of control since '05, although early on the Steelers did a good job of working that grey area of "dirty, but not illegal" with stuff like the Kimo and Rivers hits.  The Huber hit really seemed to set the Bengals off on a path of mutually assured destruction.  I understand that, to a point.  Your teammates keep getting blasted and injured, and the refs won't do anything about it, so it falls to the players to do something about it. 

I will also say that another reason Bengals fans feel there is a league bias is their enforcement of copyright laws on footage of incidents that document the Steelers cheap shots in the rivalry.  Numerous fans had compilation videos of of stuff like the Kimo, Rivers, and Huber hits taken down for copyright violations after the last Wild Card game.  One of the CincyJungle writers had the NFL force him to remove a Vine of LeGarrett Blount gouging Shawn Williams' eyes during a game in.