NFL gets call right during game, then wrong the day after

The NFL got this one wrong, after the referees got it right.

Dante Wesley of the Carolina Panthers is a gunner. The guy who runs down the sideline on a punt who becomes the first line of defense once the returner catches the football. The best thing a gunner can do? Lay a huge hit on the returner just after the ball gets there to try and cause a fumble.

What Dante Wesley did yesterday in the game against Tampa Bay, though, can only be called one thing: dirty.



It's true that the gunner cannot find the ball in the air while running full speed downfield and getting blocked by 1 or 2 guys. It's true the gunner has to rely on visual cues from the returner. But there are no visual cues from the returner. The returner hits the deck before the ball does. And Wesley didn't accidentally hit Clifton Smith, he launched himself into Smith with no reason to believe the ball would get there when he hit him. That's dirty, and that's dangerous.

The referees made the right call: personal foul penalty and an ejection for Wesley. There's no place in the game for that, and if they didn't do it, the Tampa Bay players would have rioted. The the NFL got to weigh in, and they suspended Wesley (good) for just 1 game (wait, WHAT???).

Let's compare this to an event from a couple years ago that resulted in an ejection and a 5-game suspension: the Albert Haynesworth stomping incident:



Haynesworth stepped on the face of a prone Andre Gurode, who didn't have a helmet on at the time. That was dangerous and dirty, and could have ended Gurode's career. All of those things are true of the Wesley hit as well.

I guess you can make the argument that Wesley just mistimed his hit, and at least it was a football play, whereas stepping on a helmetless player's head is never an okay play, but Wesley left his feet to take off Smith's head a full second before the ball got there against a defensless return man.

To suspend Wesley for only 1 game is to minimize the danger of concussions to Clifton Smith's health and his career. At a time where the NFL has commissioned a study on concussions, and stories like Ted Johnson's and Kyle Turley's, among many others, that is the last message the NFL should want to send.

With great speed and power has to come great responsibility, otherwise, as Carson Palmer said to SI's Peter King in a quarterback roundtable before the season started, "The truth of the matter is . . . somebody is going to die here in the NFL. It's going to happen." The NFL had a chance to take a stand on a clearly dirty play, and failed to do so.