Alaric Jackson punched Bradley Chubb in the face after a game. On Saturday the NFL fined Chubb $14,329.
That is taunting, officially. Mike Garafolo reported the amount, and the league’s reasoning is that Chubb started the exchange during handshakes after Buffalo’s overtime win over the Rams in Los Angeles. Jackson swung. Chubb did not swing back. Chubb got a bill.
Chubb Told On Himself
The strange thing is that Chubb has not disputed any of it. He said he was the one who initiated the conversation while Jackson was swapping jerseys with Deone Walker, called Jackson a front-running talker, and recounted what he said to him: “I said, we are gonna see y’all’s ass again.”
That is trash talk. It is also the single most normal thing that happens on a football field, which is why fining a man more than fourteen thousand dollars for it, in the same week the league processed the punch that followed, lands so badly.
Jackson was suspended two games initially. He appealed and got it cut to one, and he will forfeit $934,555 by sitting out Sunday against the Cardinals. So the player who threw the punch lost about 65 times what the player who received it lost. That part of the math is fine.
The appeal matters here too. Jackson’s two-game suspension became one game, which means the league itself found something mitigating in how the altercation started. The most obvious mitigating thing is that somebody was talking to him. The NFL then fined the talker anyway. Both of those rulings cannot be entirely right.
The part that is not fine is the principle. The NFL has decided that saying something to an opponent after the whistle is a finable offense, and it is going to keep collecting on that regardless of what the other guy does in response.
The Rest of the Bill From That Game
Chubb was not alone. Buffalo running back James Cook was fined $21,167 for illegal use of the helmet. Bills safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson was fined $11,194 for unnecessary roughness. Rams defensive lineman Braden Fiske was fined $11,941 for a facemask.
Three of those four are football fouls, the kind of contact the league has every right to price. Chubb’s is a words foul. He talked, took a fist to the jaw for it, and now owes the league a five-figure deduction from his paycheck.
Chubb will pay it and almost certainly keep talking, because that is who he has been since Denver drafted him. He is not going to be reformed by an invoice.
What this does is give the Bills and the Rams something to carry into their next meeting, which is exactly what Chubb promised. Buffalo won the game. Jackson lost a week and most of a million dollars. Chubb lost $14,329 for a sentence.
The league will say it is enforcing sportsmanship. What it actually did was fine the guy who got hit.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.