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Following the incident near the end of the Browns’ win over the Steelers on Thursday Night Football in which Cleveland defensive end Myles Garrett removed Pittsburgh quarterback Mason Rudolph’s helmet and hit him in the head with it, you knew NFL justice was going to come fairly quickly. The incident went viral overnight and gave the NFL several black eyes in the process, so the league fired back as quickly as it could.
As reported by ESPN’s Adam Schefter, Garrett has been suspended indefinitely, which in the league’s purview means that he will not see any on-field action throughout this season and the playoffs. Garrett must speak with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell before he is to be reinstated next season. In addition, Steelers center Maurkice Pouncey, who came to his quarterback’s defense and was ejected, will be suspended for the next three games, and Browns defensive lineman Larry Ogunjobi, who was also ejected, was suspended for one game. Each team was fined $250,000 for the fracas.
Per the NFL’s statement, “Additional discipline for other players will be forthcoming through the standard accountability process, including those players that left the bench to enter the fight area.”
Rudolph, who appeared to attempt to remove Garrett’s helmet in response to Garrett’s late hit with eight seconds left in the game, was not suspended. Fines have not been ruled out for Rudolph and other players. We also have no word at this point what might happen to Browns safety Damarious Randall, who was ejected halfway through the third quarter after a helmet-to-helmet hit on Steelers receiver Diontae Johnson, who left the field bleeding from his right ear.
This was one of the ugliest games in NFL history, and the fallout is just beginning. Stay tuned to Touchdown Wire for further news as it develops.
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar has also covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”
