NFL misses target with Vontaze Burfict's excessive suspension

Bill Bender

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NFL misses target with Vontaze Burfict's excessive suspension image

Bengals linebacker Vontaze Burfict does not get the benefit of the doubt.

No player who accumulates more than $800,000 in fines and racks up 16 unnecessary roughness, personal foul and roughing the passer penalties in his career will get that, even when he should. The NFL is making an example out of Burfict with his latest five-game suspension after an illegal hit on Chiefs fullback Anthony Sherman in a preseason game Aug. 19.

Is the NFL suspending Burfict's hit or his reputation? In this case, it looks too much like the latter. Way too much.

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Five games for this? Any other player does that, and it's a penalty and a fine. This is excessive punishment at least. At most it's the NFL targeting Burfict as the don't-do-it poster child for a new rule under which any running back, wide receiver or tight end running a route is considered defenseless.

In real time, Burfict's hit looks like a cheap shot, a flag and a fine. If you want to suspend him for one game or at most two based on his history, that's fine. But five games — almost a third of the season — is excessive and sets a ridiculous precedent.

If Burfict gets five games, does that mean other offenders will get one, two or three games for a play that wasn't penalized during the game? If so, many defensive players are going to get suspended or fined for similar hits, and the situation will become the NFL's version of college football's hard-to-define targeting rule, which causes a fresh controversy every Saturday.

Emphasizing player safety is important, but there's a slippery slope. How much different is Burfict's hit then what New Orleans tight end Coby Fleener does to San Diego's Joey Bosa here?

We know that's not a defenseless receiver, but is it a cheap shot? Where is the line between player safety and a football play?

Burfict will appeal the suspension, and he'll probably lose based on the spirit of the new rule and his reputation as a dirty player. That begs a question: What does a five-game suspension really accomplish?

The Bengals are behind Burfict: “The film shows that the hit was legal, that Vontaze engaged his opponent from the front, and that contact was shoulder-to-chest. The Club will support Vontaze in the appeal process," the team said in a statement.

Burfict is behind Burfict, too. He's an over-the-edge player who just admitted to slowing down so he could stiff-arm Kirk Cousins on a pick six in a preseason game. Burfict doesn't help himself because of that reputation.

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The NFL took a stand on that reputation. What would the NFL do if Burfict ended a player's career on such a hit ? That's probably a question the league wrestles with every time he starts trending on Twitter for such a play. Is that the spirit of the new rule?

It shouldn't be. A five-game suspension isn't the right answer. There are enough gray areas. It doesn't look like Burfict hits Sherman in the head or neck.

This is about perceived reputation, of both Burfict and Cincinnati. That's not fair. If it's anybody other than Burfict, it's not a suspension. Sure, Burfict earned that reputation after a three-game suspension resulting from a hit on Antonio Brown in a 2016 AFC wild-card game, but this seems like way too prior history. Given the NFL's inconsistent history of selective punishment off the field, it only creates a trap.

If the suspension is not overturned or at least taken down a few games, this creates a we're-getting-screwed narrative out of Cincinnati. It looks that way, too. Imagine Ezekiel Elliott's suspension being appealed down to three games, or if a Pittsburgh linebacker has a similar hit in a game and isn't suspended. The comparative tweets will come by the thousands.

At that point, Cincinnati and Burfict will have learned absolutely nothing from the exercise. If that's the intent of the punishment, it's doomed to fail. The Bengals lost their best defensive player for a third of the season because of a questionable play that will happen a lot, especially in the black-and-blue-is-encouraged AFC North. How many hits like that does one see during a Steelers-Ravens game?

When more questions like that are asked, it becomes more clear that this punishment misses the mark.

Five games? In this Burfict case, five games for a new rule might be five too many.

Not that he'll get the benefit of the doubt.

Bill Bender

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Bill Bender graduated from Ohio University in 2002 and started at The Sporting News as a fantasy football writer in 2007. He has covered the College Football Playoff, NBA Finals and World Series for SN. Bender enjoys story-telling, awesomely-bad 80s movies and coaching youth sports.