The NFL suspended Denver Broncos safety Kareem Jackson for the second time this season on Monday for a hit on the field.
This time, the NFL imposed a four-game suspension on Jackson for a hit on Minnesota Vikings quarterback Josh Dobbs during the Broncos’ 21-20 victory on Sunday night.
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Although no penalty was called on the field, Jon Runyan, the NFL’s vice president of football operations, informed Jackson that the league had judged he had violated Rule 12, Section 2, Article 10 (a) of the NFL rulebook, which states: “It is a foul if a player lowers his head and makes forcible contact with his helmet against an opponent.”
Seemingly in response, Jackson posted on Tuesday on social media excerpts from an interview with seven-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback Tom Brady, who had appeared on “The Stephen A. Smith Show” on Monday.
“There’s a lot of mediocrity in today’s NFL. I don’t see the excellence that I saw in the past,” Brady said, and he cited coaching and rule changes as two of the reasons.
“I look at a lot of players like Ray Lewis and Rodney Harrison and Ronnie Lott and guys that impacted the game in a certain way,” Brady said, “and every hit they would have made would have been a penalty.
“You hear coaches complaining about their own player being tackled and not necessarily why don’t they talk to their player about how to protect himself. How to get rid of the ball, how to run out of bounds, how to get down, how to lower your pad level. We used to work on the fundamentals of those things all the time. Now they’re trying to be regulated all the time. I think the offensive players need to protect themselves. It’s not up to a defensive player to protect an offensive player. A defensive player needs to protect himself. You shouldn’t ask the offensive player to protect him.
“I think a lot of the way that the rules have come into play have allowed this you can essentially play carefree and if anyone hits you hard, there’s a penalty. And that’s very different than how I played. I didn’t throw the ball to certain areas because I was afraid the player was going to get knocked out. That’s the reality. I didn’t throw it to the middle when I played Ray Lewis because he’d knock them out of the game, and I couldn’t afford to lose a good player.”
Jackson did not knock Dobbs out of the game, but he did cause a fumble that Denver turned into a field goal.
Jackson will appeal his latest suspension, just as he did his first four-game suspension, to the hearing officers jointly appointed and compensated by the NFL and NFL Players Association to decide appeals of on-field player discipline. Derrick Brooks reduced the first suspension to two games.
On Oct. 23, the NFL suspended Jackson for four games for a hit in the Broncos’ 19-17 victory over the Green Bay Packers the previous day. On the third snap of the fourth quarter, Jackson brought down tight end Luke Musgrave with what was judged a helmet-to-helmet hit at the end of an 18-yard reception. Jackson was penalized for unnecessary roughness and disqualified from further participation.
Runyan cited Rule 12, Section 2, Article 9 (b)(1) when he suspended Jackson that time. That rule states: “It is a foul if a player forcibly hits the defenseless player’s head or neck area with the helmet, face mask, forearm or shoulder, even if the initial contact is lower than the player’s neck, and regardless of whether the defensive player also uses his arms to tackle the defenseless player by encircling or grasping him.”
Jackson was fined by the NFL four times for unnecessary roughness in the first six weeks of the 2023 season. Twice the fines stemmed from penalties called on the field.
The NFL fined Jackson $14,819 in Week 1, $19,669 in Week 2, $11,473 in Week 3 and $43,709 in Week 6.
In Denver’s 35-33 loss to Washington on Sept. 17, Jackson was penalized and ejected for a hit on Commanders tight end Logan Thomas on a touchdown reception with 1:47 left in the first half.
A first-round draft choice from Alabama’s 2009 BCS national-championship team, Jackson is in his 14th NFL season.
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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.
