Marlon Humphrey will pay the price for his pick-6 celebration in the win over the Pittsburgh Steelers on December 21. It was the first interception return for a touchdown of Humphrey’s career, and he concluded it by doing some epic, next-level taunting (as is somewhat commonplace in heated rivalry games) of the Steelers in pursuit of him.
And doing so netted him a fine of $11,255 from the league for “unsportsmanlike conduct.”
Only Humphrey can say for sure whether it was worth it. But to hear Humphrey tell it, it was not even taunting.
He claims that he was looking to lateral the ball.
“I want to make this pretty clear: When I was running with the football, I saw David Ojabo, a really great teammate of mine, and I was trying to pitch him the football,” Humphrey said to the media that in day in postgame.
“Some people brought up to me that it looked like taunting or something, but I was trying to pitch him the football, and there’s no taunting there at all; I just want to make that very clear.
“Ojabo is a great guy. I wanted to pitch it to him. Then I got in the end zone, and it was good.”
It certainly looked like taunting to almost every outside observer, but hey, this is his story, and he’s sticking to it.
Ojabo has endured many hardships in his career, so if the opportunity to give him a major moment of glory were present, it’s understandable why you would try to make that happen for him.