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Remember Myles Garrett did that thing with his helmet like three internet years ago, and that’s all anyone in sports media could talk about for an entire day? Remember how much people tried to out-take one another, going so far to say shit like this:
You got your likes, bro. Now chill.
Much to the chagrin of the particularly fragile, Myles Garrett was not thrown in prison, but he was suspended indefinitely for clubbing Mason Rudolph with his helmet.
While Twitter attorneys had their own assessment of how this ugly incident should be perceived, former NFL players Michael Vick, Tony Gonzales, Charles Woodson, and Rob Gronkowski engaged in a round-table discussion about it to re-calibrate the perspective on what many believes to be a fireable offense.
Gronkowski likened the play to an uncharacteristic cheap shot he delivered to the back of the head of Tre’Davious White in 2017, earning him a one-game suspension.
“I’ve never seen something like this and it’s just not made for the game of football. It was ugly,” Gronkowski said Sunday on FOX. “You got to look at all the circumstances. I’ve had a similar situation happen to me like this before. I kind of would call it like a blackout, you just blackout on the field. It was when I was playing the Buffalo Bills and it was verses Tre’Davious White. I got held three times in the play, I was getting held throughout the whole season.
“That frustration finally came to me right there on the spot. He made the interception on the play, I got held about three times on that same play and I just got up and I was frustrated. Like, I just blacked out and I was furious. I was running after him like the play was still going on and I went down and the second I went down, the second I brought the elbow right to his neck, head area I said, ‘Oh no. What am I doing? This isn’t me.’ The follow-through went through, it happened. But I knew right at that second, it wasn’t me.”
Garrett will meet with former NFL wide receiver James Thrash, who serves as league appeals officer for on-field player discipline, according to Fox, and has a history of reducing suspensions.
For comparison, the Malice in the Palace happened 15 years ago today.
[h/t For The Win]