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New York Giants defensive back and special teams ace, Keion Crossen, received a FedEx package from the NFL this week. And no, it wasn’t filled with anything celebratory.
Instead, Crossen was fined $6,133 for unnecessary roughness after his ugly and late hit on Las Vegas Raiders punter A.J. Cole in Week 9. Somewhat surprisingly, Crossen was not ejected from the game for the hit.
Incredibly cheap shot here by Keion Crossen, no place in the NFL for this
He deserves to be fined and possibly suspended, luckily Cole is ok but could’ve been a lot worse pic.twitter.com/FtnA5vnYw7
— Tristen Kuhn (@KuhnTristen) November 8, 2021
In reality, Crossen is lucky the NFL didn’t opt to suspend him for the hit. It was indefensible, although Giants head coach Joe Judge didn’t immediately recognize that.
“I don’t know exactly what they saw. I’ll look at the tape myself, but it didn’t look like he went to the head area,” Judge told reporters after the game. “I think Keion, he just explained to us that he saw (Pharoh Cooper) coming up the field, made a missed tackle, he stuck his foot in the ground and looked like he went up to what we call it, ‘next level’ and make the play on the person in front of you and the thing creased and got going. I don’t know if he even knew at that time it was the punter.
“We’re not going to take cheap shots on anybody — quarterbacks, specialists or whatever it is. But at the same time, if it’s an interception or it’s a return and there’s somebody in the way where we’re going to run the ball, you’ve got to block them and open up that seam. I have not seen the tape. I caught a bit of it out of the corner of my eye. I’m going to take a look at it right there and if it’s anything that we have to correct, we’ll correct.”
Judge never addressed the play again.
The 25-year-old Crossen was acquired by the Giants in a trade with the Houston Texans back in August. He has appeared in all nine games this season, recording eight tackles (six solo, one for a loss), one QB hit, one sack, one forced fumble and one fumble recovery.