Let’s all just calm down a bit about the Myles Garrett incident

People are calling for Garrett to be prosecuted.

Let me get this out of the way right off the bat: what Myles Garrett did on Thursday night in hitting Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph over the head with his own helmet should never, ever happen in a football game.

It was disturbing, it was horrifying and it deserves a lengthy suspension. I’ve seen calls for the rest of the season, which would amount to six games.

But there are shouts from all corners for him to face worse. A year-long ban. A lifetime ban. There’s talk of prosecuting him and having him serve jail time.

And that’s where we need to all take a step back.

We don’t talk about assault when it’s a safety launching his helmet like a missile at a defenseless wide receiver’s head, when we’ve seen what repeated blows to the brain can do to a former NFL player. We don’t wonder if a player should face jail time if he sees a quarterback on the run out of the pocket and goes for a hard tackle.

What’s more, we don’t say the same about pitchers who throw 100 MPH fastballs at the heads of hitters for the simple act of tossing a bat or staring at a home run one millisecond too long. As former NFL running back Arian Foster correctly pointed out, we’re perfectly fine with fighting in hockey even though we’ve seen the effect it has had on some former NHL enforcers.

And on top of all of this, it’s not the first time this has happened.

Just this past August, Chicago Bears offensive lineman Kyle Long was ejected from training camp for taking off rookie DE Jalen Dalton’s helmet and hitting him with it. Did anyone call for Long to be prosecuted? No. We didn’t collectively see the footage and have spread across social media instantaneously. Yet Foster — a veteran of eight NFL seasons — said this kind of incident “happens in every training camp.”

This hit was blatant. It was obvious. It was on national television. Of course it deserves the attention it’s getting. A suspension is the just punishment. But to bring up jail time when we look the other way on other examples of violence in sports is a step too far.

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