The agent for Cleveland Browns wide receiver Mohamed Massaquoi doesn't think the NFL went nearly far enough in its punishment today of Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison for his vicious hit on the seond-year wideout. Harrison was fined $75,000 by the league office, but wasn't suspended. "There's a lot of tough talk about we're going to do this and we're going do that, but what's $75,000 to somebody who's made $20 milion over the past 18 months," said Brian Ayrault, who represents Massaquoi, in a telephone interview with National Football Post. "That's less than one percent. It's like fining a billionaire $5 million. That's nothing to them. It needs to be enforced in a way that makes it stop." Ayrault made the point that the NFL should consider suspending offenders until the player that they've injured is able to return to the field. Massaquoi's status for this week's game is up in the air. "Maybe the player should be suspended and can't return to playing until the player that he's injured has returned to full health and is back on the field," Ayrault said. "The NFL legislated clotheslines and head slaps out of the league. You can't head slap or clothesline a guy anymore. Why should you be allowed to use your helmet as a weapon? "This sort of stuff is indicative of the fact that nobody can tackle in the NFL anymore. There's no form tackling anymore. It's all block tackling. There's no wrapping up, you just throw your body at a guy like a missile. Except for a few players and Antoine Winfield, I don't see too many good tacklers." Although the NFL has said it will consider suspending players for flagrant hits going forward, Ayrault doesn't believe what happened this week is a sufficient enough deterrent for Harrison, who has gone on the record to say his goal is to hurt players, but not necesssarily injure them and bragged about putting Browns wide receiver Josh Cribbs to sleep. "What if he hits a guy this week and paralyzes him like Jack Tatum did to Darryl Stingley?" Ayrault said. "Are we going to wait for that. They've legislated out the helmet-to-helmet hit. Until it's enforced in a way that makes it stop, that's really the key point." Source: National Football Post
He's right about no wrapping up anymore, at least over the middle. I wonder who Antoine Winfield's agent is.
I think Harrison is a thug but honestly the $75K was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over the top and if he had gotten fined 2 weeks ago it would have been 5 or 10K. Both of his hits IMO was legal and he shouldn't have been singled out this week. Massaquoi's agent is being a rod, if he was Harrison's agent he'd be screaming about his client being overfined.
It was definitely only that high because of all the other hits that occurred that week. If the 4 hits occurred in 4 separate weeks we'd be talking about it in the off-season.
