Well, the NFL's weekly list of fines came out today. The great thing about this week's list, compared to the list over the past couple of weeks, is that it shows that Roger Goodell might finally be getting tired of Pat and Kevin Williams making him and the league's front office look like an idiot.
To wit. . .in the Sunday night game against Chicago, we all saw Chicago defensive end Adewale Ogunleye hit Gus Frerotte in the back approximately half an hour after Frerotte had released a pass and was backpedaling away from the play. (Well, not really half an hour, but it certainly wasn't a split-second thing, either.) Yes, Frerotte flopped like a British soccer player, but the fact remains that it was still a cheap shot by Ogunleye. He was not fined for that hit.
This past weekend against Detroit, while Jared Allen was attempting to chase down Daunte Culpepper, Lions' rookie offensive tackle Gosder Cherilius, who was on all fours on the turf, saw Allen coming and basically just stuck his head into Allen's knee. Was Cherilius' hit legal? Sure it was. . .by the same definition, so was the "hit" that Allen had laid on Matt Schaub a few weeks previous that he got fined over and had everyone screaming bloody murder over for a week. And "hit," in this case, is defined as, "Jared Allen being on the ground and Schaub getting pushed into him by Kevin Williams."
Cherilius' fine for a similar offense? Exactly zero dollars.
The NFL DID, however, decide it would be a good idea to fine Vikings' DT Fred Evans for a face mask he committed on Lions' RB Kevin Smith during the same ball game. Evans was fined $5,000 for his offense. Only one slight problem.
Had anyone from the league office bothered to take the five or ten whole seconds it would have taken for them to view a replay of the play where that penalty was called, they would have seen that Evans didn't lay so much as a single finger on Smith's face mask, but instead grabbed Smith's shoulder pad in such a manner to make his head jerk to the side. I'm not making this up. . .if anyone has the game TiVo'd (TiVoed? I don't know), go back and view the replay of it for yourself.
But, when two of your teammates are pimp-slapping the league office in court, some repercussions are to be expected, I suppose.
Roger Goodell might want to consider sitting down at some point. . .his agenda is showing.