Azeez Al-Shaair’s Dirty Hit
In the second quarter of Sunday’s matchup between the Jaguars and Texans, Trevor Lawrence took off on a scramble drill. He got what yardage he could, and slid. Linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair hit him as he was sliding. He hit him really hard. Trevor was instantly and obviously concussed (his arms did the fencing response we are all now too familiar with). The Jaguars Evan Engram retaliated, a whole fight happened, and Al-Shaair was ejected. As of Tuesday morning, he has been suspended for 3 games.
It was an unnecessary use of force and outside Texans homer circles I think everyone more or less acknowledges that. The discourse has still permeated though, because that’s what discourse does. And coming at the discourse several days too late is what I do. So lets rumble, baby.
I think the hit was dirty and unnecessary but maybe a touch overblown. This was not the dirtiest hit I’ve ever seen, but it was dirty. I think Al-Shaair got his large suspension not so much from the hit itself but because he is establishing the beginnings of a Vontaze Burfict style resume. This is a guy who jacked up Caleb Williams on the sideline earlier this year and then punched another Bears player after the Bears rightfully took issue with the hit (the hit was legal, to be fair, but the degree of force the hit contained is certainly suspicious). I think Al-Shaair is one of those guys who does not know how to pull up or ease off. He wants to hit everyone really hard. Not a bad instinct for a linebacker, but one that must be measured appropriately and properly controlled. The fact that he’s had a few suspicious hits in the past indicate a pattern, and that means he needs better coaching.
Unfortunately, DeMeco Ryans kinda put his foot in his mouth on the incident. Ryans said he supports Al-Shaair completely and that the Jaguars overreacted in response. That was…a bad look. Ryans is a former NFL defender, he’s obviously going to be on the defense side of this argument (and I don’t think he is without a few decent points when he discusses how some QBs take advantage of the rule coddling), but blaming the Jaguars for overreacting is kind of insulting. Al-Shaair just visibly and unnecessarily took Lawrence out of the game, very violently. If the Jaguars DON’T react there it frankly looks even worse. Remember a couple seasons ago when Kayvon Thibodeaux injured Nick Foles on a sack and did snow angels? Remember how no Colt came to Foles’ defense? The Colts got destroyed for that, rightfully so. It was a major indicator of the joke that was the Jeff Saturday era. Dirty hits get retaliated. It’s unfortunate because it always results in offsetting penalties instead of the correct and justified outcome, but it’s part of the sport’s honor. I would imagine DeMeco and angry Texans fans would feel differently if Stroud got rocked by a dirty hit instead.
A lot of us probably got reminded of a very similar hit by Kiko Alonso against Joe Flacco. You simply can’t do that. I do understand Ryans’ point that a QB scrambling puts defenders in an awkward position. You can’t hit a QB, but you still have to make a tackle. A scrambling QB is going to try to get as many yards as he can most of the time. There are some QBs who understand the privilege they have and use it. Mahomes has baited countless ticky-tack hits out of bounds because he knows he can, and if a defender pulls up too early in fear of hitting him, Mahomes will scamper a few extra yards. Aaron Rodgers, back when he was younger and more mobile, was the king of this bullshit. It’s smart on the QB’s part. Take advantage of the situation that is in your favor. Kenny Pickett did a fake slide in college and it was the sickest juke ever, yet it also clearly constituted such a major disadvantage for defenders forced to play it that it was banned immediately.
No QB fake slides in the NFL. That’s the big thing to note here. There has been chatter of faking slides and such by defenders but this just doesn’t really happen. The sideline bullshit does, but fake slides do not. This isn’t a reasonable problem for defenders to be concerned about. Al-Shaair has no good excuse here. If a QB is scrambling, you have to treat the situation as an expected slide and position your body to react accordingly. That means staying on your feet, setting yourself, and making sure you have proper tackle form. This allows you to properly play whatever happens, be it a slide you have to pull up on or a tackle if the QB gets frisky. Earlier this year Tua tried to get frisky and ran into Damar Hamlin and concussed himself. Nobody blamed Hamlin for that (nobody intelligent anyway) and Hamlin did exactly as he is supposed to. That concussion was Tua’s fault.
Al-Shaair launched himself like a human missile, leading with his forearm as a battering ram. He might have an argument he was going for the tackle if he had, you know, had his arms out and open like he wanted to make a tackle, even in the middle of a dive. He wanted to ram Trevor, low. He was either deliberately going for the head and body on the slide or he was aiming for the knees and Trevor sliding made it worse. Neither is good. His intent in the move is clear. You can argue all you want about how defenders have to play, and how they have to react, and sometimes the speed of the game makes it hard for defenders to defy physics, and all that is true. The major problem that this argument fails to address is that a scrambling QB is a very specific situation that requires the defender to anticipate the slide. Maybe the slide is too fast to precisely react to in real time, but it’s never a problem when the defender isn’t a dumbass and has several seconds of anticipation to set himself up for all potential moves to begin with. Look back at that Tua concussion and see how Hamlin was properly set up if Tua had slid instead. Hamlin could have just tagged him down, maybe jumped to get out of the way like a lot of defenders end up doing in that scenario. Hamlin didn’t play it like a douchebag trying to hurt Tua.
Al-Shaair couldn’t properly react to the slide because he set himself up to be a human missile instead of playing it to properly react to a potential slide. I’m glad he’s suspended. He’s got the league’s eye on him now, so he better shape up or face a lot of extra scrutiny he will no longer get away with.
EDIT: Something I forgot to touch on but do want to point out: the suspension statement from Jon Runyan was surprisingly harsh and coming from a guy a lot of players thought was dirty, that’s also a bad look. I do think Al-Shaair is being made a slight example of, but in this case it’s probably necessary to some degree because this kind of hit needs to be extremely discouraged.
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Worth noting, I think, that one of the people on the Texans who came out in defense of Al-Shaair’s performance was Texans VP of Football Operations, Jon Runyan.
Yes, THAT Jon Runyan. The one who in 2006 was picked by players in a Sports Illustrated poll as the NFL’s second dirtiest player. And whose response was “they’re just soft whiners, the sport is meant to be played this way, not turned into basketball.”
This was 2006, the NFL was still doing Jacked Up, and that was too soft for Jon Runyan, who is now setting the tone organizationally for the Texans’ players and staff to follow. I’m suddenly seeing possible reasons for why they’ve been having such bad penalty problems this year.
Retroactive: I misunderstood this in the late night, Runyan is actually the NFL’s entire VP of Policy and Rules Admin. No connection to the Texans.
…Though then why is THAT type of player in charge of handing out fines and shit?
Runyon didn’t defend it, unless I missed that somewhere. He issued the letter of suspension to Al-Shaair, which basically said “We are suspending you because you are a disgrace to the game”. After detailing the entire breakdown of his actions (not just the hit itself, but the fight afterward, the taunting, and so on), this was on the end:
“Your lack of sportsmanship and respect for the game of football and all those who play, coach, and enjoy watching it, is troubling and does not reflect the core values of the NFL…Your continued disregard for NFL playing rules puts the health and safety of both you and your opponents in jeopardy and will not be tolerated.”
Didn’t Josh Allen fake slide against the Steelers in the Wild Card game last year?
Been a long time reader and fan of yours but I gotta speak up on this. Not even a week after your promise of no rightwing bullshit being tolerated you go on and do this. A whole piece mocking Al-Shaair one of the only Black Muslims in the league because he hit a presious white qb. I know you talk a good talk about social politics and doing the right thing but this shows you still got some racial and religion bias going on under the surface. If the names were switched I wonder if there would be this outrage for him to get suspended. Microagressions are serious stuff Dave and I hope you figure yours out so I can go back to enjoying your work. People like this that talk about doing the right thing and still show bias to white people is how Trump supporters thrive. You ain’t one of them are you? Or are you really that different behind closed doors than your public persona?
Look man, the comic is about what I and a lot of people feel is a dirty hit. I cannot change the facts of who was involved in the play. If the races were reversed, or if Al-Shaair had hit a black QB instead, I believe I’d feel the same way about the hit being dirty and deserving of punishment.
I’ve got my blind spots, we all do, and I try my best to identify them when pointed out, but this comic is about two players involved in a football play, and that play has generated a lot of discussion about the play itself, and absolutely none of my commentary had anything to do with race or religion, that’s you bringing it into the conversation. I wanted to comment on a major discussion point for the past weekend. I dont know much about Al-Shaair, but I think he made a dirty play, and I hope he doesn’t do it again.
If you’ve been a long time reader and a fan I would hope you’d at least give me a little benefit of the doubt before accusing me of secretly being a trump supporter and assuming some dark intentions you’ve projected onto me. I get the sense from your comment you either think Al-Shaair’s hit wasnt dirty and therefore all the outrage and anger must be caused by something else like bigotry, or you think Al-Shaair’s hit was dirty, but the outrage is still too strong and is caused by the same bigotry. If it’s the former, why do you think the hit was fair? If it’s the latter, that’s a discussion worth having, but not really the subject of the comic, which is more about the hit itself and the problems with it. I do think the league’s statement and punishment was a bit higher than I expected and he’s being made a slight example of. But the hit was dirty, imo, and I outlined the reasons why I think so.
Look, I love to piss in Dave’s cheerios. Honestly. It’s one of my favorite things to do around here. But this… is not one of those times. Being one of the only black Muslims in the league is not a green card for Al-Shaair to turn the NFL into the MMA. Evenly criticizing a player for an objective foul is not a microaggression, because if it was JJ Watt throwing forearms, I’m very confident this comic would be the same and Dave’s take would be the same.
The goal of society is to move towards EQUALITY, where everyone can be freely criticized objectively for what they do, regardless of race, creed, gender, etc. What you are suggesting is not that. You are suggesting that Al-Shaair should be given special treatment BECAUSE he’s a black muslim. That’s not equality, that’s just swinging the pendulum in the opposite direction, which ain’t cool.
Can we give Houston a break? When have they ever protected or defended a player when it wasn’t deserved? These are just good ol’ boys in Texas looking out for one another when the big bad media decides to cancel them.
Al-Shaair was way too aggressive on that play and was rightfully suspended. It’s a repeated offense (His punch against the Bears, Hitting Tony Pollard WAY too late Etc.) and got the right punishment (I was hoping for 2 games, but I get it).
With that being said, it was an accident and NOT a purposefully late hit. Lawrence made the decision to slide just before Al-Shaair made the decision to “Hit Stick” him. He had under a second to adjust. I also think his late adjustment was because he didn’t want to hit Lawrence in the head and tried to hit his chest instead, but the play was just too fast.
Coaching is part of it, Demeco Ryans defense plays with a “Swarm” mentality, and are taught to be aggressive; but no other player on the Texans have been fined for illegal hits. Hell, we’ve had perfectly legal hit sticks be penalized just because it was a big hit.
Also take Demeco Ryan’s assessment with a grain of salt. He was clearly displeased after the hit, but he’s never going to publically throw his players under the bus, that just who he is.
AL-Shaair is no where as dirty as Burfict or any other dirty historical player, he doesn’t want to purposefully injure anyone. Burfict purposefully twisted Cam Newtons’s ankle once. This is his first suspension, hopefully he learns from it.
Oh, so he wasn’t trying to injure Roschon Johnson when he punched him in the fucking face?
This is some weapons-grade copium, and I don’t understand why Texans fans can’t just admit it was a dirty hit and move on with their lives. Like I’m a Broncos fan, we had Aqib Talib and Bill Romanowski playing for us, and I never heard anyone else try to defend those fuckers’ most despicable moments.
Then again, I wonder if this is just a Houston sports thing and you guys just take the victim mentality every time like when your baseball team gets caught cheating or pretending that James Harden is a good basketball player and not just a walking foul machine.
I’m not hearing a whole lot of defiant defense of Al-Shaair’s hit from the Houston media or the fans I know, granted I don’t have a comprehensive experience. Tom Brady has, I think, been the hit’s most surprising public defender.
The statements by Ryans and the Texans’ front office would likely be given regardless of the team. Coaches and GMs have no reason to risk losing the locker room so they can look better to the fans or the media, because most of the time the fans and the media come back around if/when the team wins. Not how I would prefer it to be, but changing the situation goes beyond the Texans franchise.
Yeah Ryans and Caserio standing by their guy is not a surprise and most of their points are valid regarding the issues of defense and inconsistency of punishments. I specifically had issue with Ryans blaming Jacksonville
Assuming you’re correct, then Al-Shaair’s intention was to dive – forearm first – directly into Lawrence’s gut?
Because that’s EXACTLY what would have happened if Trevor had kept running. That is still an asshat move. Like Dave said, you need to open your arms, wrap, and tackle. Under no circumstances, sliding or not, can you lunge at someone with your forearm. He’s lucky he didn’t snap it in half on Trevor’s helmet.
Notice that it was the forearm with a big brace on it, so there was much less of a chance that he, himself, would suffer any injury. Unless that was simply an “accident” as well.
It reminded me of the hit Teddy Bridgewater took from Lamarcus Joyner once upon a time. Teddy was clearly sliding and Joyner not only goes low, but twists his body to throw his shoulder into Teddy’s head. He makes an unnatural move to inflict extra damage. I saw the same thing with the Al-Shaair hit: an unnatural tackle where he leads with his shoulder and forearm to deliver a blow. It’s the forearm that sends it over into “dirty” vs just “penalty”. That being said, there’s a difference between a “dirty hit” and a “dirty player”, I don’t think Al-Shaair is a dirty player…..yet…..but the line between “hard-hitter” and headhunter is usually attitude after the fact.