Posted by Sabrina B. @gametimegirl
The NFL on Tuesday fined New England Patriots defensive back Brandon Meriweather $50,000 for two helmet-to-helmet hits on Todd Heap in Sunday’s game, according to a league source. He will not be suspended.
Meriweather was flagged for a second-quarter hit on Heap, who lay on the field being attended to by Ravens medical personnel for several minutes before getting up under his own power. Heap was leaping for a Joe Flacco pass that had sailed over his head when Meriweather thrust himself, helmet-first, into the Ravens’ tight end.
Earlier in the game, Meriweather also hit Heap near the goal line.
After a weekend full of dangerous hits, the NFL announced Tuesday that it will immediately begin suspending players for dangerous and flagrant hits that violate rules, particularly those involving helmets.
Suspensions will be in place for this weekend’s games and could be handed out for hits that took place last Sunday, vice president of football operations Ray Anderson said Tuesday.
On Tuesday morning before the NFL’s announcement, Anderson told ESPN Radio’s “Mike and Mike in the Morning”: “We’ve got to get the message to players that these devastating hits and head shots will be met with a very necessary higher standard of accountability. We have to dispel the notion that you get one free pass in these egregious or flagrant shots.”
In the past, players were either fined or ejected for illegal hits. But after the series of recent flagrant tackles, several of which resulted in concussions, the NFL ramped up the punishment “for egregious and elevated hits,” Anderson said.
On Meriweather’s hit in particular, Anderson said: “That, in our view, is something that was flagrant, it was egregious and effective immediately that’s going to be looked at a very aggressive level which could include suspension without pay.”
Meriweather said he went for the hit because he thought Heap was going to come down with the pass.
“We ran that play a thousand times at practice,” Meriweather said. “Every time at practice I broke on the ball and the tight end caught it every time. I thought it was going to be overthrown but the tight end always seemed to go and get it. Instead of me waiting for the ball to see if it was going to be overthrown I just attacked. I wasn’t trying for head-to-head contact, or trying to injure anybody, or play dirty in any kind of way. It just happened.”
-ESPN
