Hit with his own helmet

[the 'stache]

It's all fun and games until somebody gets a cracked skull.


One of our attorneys could better answer this, but this, to me, comes down to intent. Garrett's intent was clearly to commit bodily harm beyond the purview of the game. I don't know how you couldn't seriously consider bringing criminal charges.

I don't happen to buy this:

"If we're going to be very technical, every single thing that takes place on a football field is assault," said Tammi Gaw, an attorney and athletic trainer based in Washington, D.C., who is the founder of Advantage Rule, a consulting firm that works on sports policy. "But sports, especially contact sports, exist thanks to a doctrine of assumption of risk."

Horse shit. A football player assumes a certain amount of risk that they're going to get hurt within the normal parameters of the game: a knee injury, a broken arm. There exists a real possibility that, if hit just right, a player could be paralyzed. It's happened before, and the NFL has instituted changes to rules to further protect its players. The kind of hit that Jack Tatum levied on Daryl Stingley in a preseason game is illegal as hell now, and for good reason. A player understands the risk of long term issues like CTE, dementia, etc. You're seeing players get out of the game because of these risks. I know of at least two cases where the player stated this was one of the primary reasons they retired.

What happened here didn't take place during normal game play. It just didn't. The whistle had blown the play dead. This was extracurricular-and Garrett took that helmet, and swung it at the Steeler's QB Mason Rudolph with intent to hurt him.

I don't think this will be prosecuted simply because it happened in Ohio. If this had happened in Pennsylvania, and it was a home team's player being targeted, they'd have to escort that idiot Garrett out of the stadium with security.

Peter et all, I'd like to hear your opinion, but this seems pretty cut and dry from a criminal complaint standpoint.