Vikings safety Harrison Smith is known for being a hard-hitting aggressive player, but that has led to a penalty problem this season, though the fairness of those calls have been questioned by fans and analysts.
Smith has committed four penalties this season. He has received three penalties relating to lowering his head to initiate contact, one of which resulted in his ejection from the game. The other penalty he committed was an unnecessary roughness.
He talked about those penalties with reporters recently:
“So I was going to try to keep my head out of the play as much as I can,” Smith said, via the Vikings Twitter account. “Don’t lead with it, lower my target. I’m always going to try to do those things and how it’s called is how it’s called. But I’m definitely always trying to improve on avoiding those calls.”
He had five penalties in 2014, but other than that, Smith has never had a season where he has been more penalized. And there are still three games to go. Regardless of how you feel about the calls on Smith, if he keeps getting them, it’s going to cost a Vikings defense with little margin for error.