“How can I continue to play this game the way that I’ve been taught to play this game since I was 10 years old?” — James Harrison, October 2010 (three or four fines ago).
James Harrison will not learn.
Despite racking up a small fortune in fines over the course of the past few years, Harrison continues to maliciously hit players without any regard for the rules. The league has tried to do everything in its power to protect the players from injury, especially head injuries and especially quarterbacks.
So what does Mr. Harrison decide to do in light of these regulations? Well he put his helmet into the grill of Colt McCoy and knocked him out cold. The little kid from Texas did not even know what happened for the rest of the game. He is now questionable to play this week, and honestly had no business coming back into the game last week. Hence the NFLPA investigation into how the Browns dealt with the injury.
But back to the point of James Harrison. He seemingly goes out of his way to do everything possible to get himself in trouble. There is space to play hard in professional football, but there is no place for injuring fellow players. With the focus that has been placed on head injuries in the past year, and the number of angles that a play can be broken down from, it is senseless to hit players in the way that Harrison goes, especially a quarterback in a primetime game.
Now he is suspended for a game, and it is a pivotal one at that. The Steelers are facing the 49er in a battle of two of the top teams, and defenses, in the league. Harrison is a vital part of the Steelers defense, and he is not only hurting himself, but hurting his teams chances of winning a pivotal late season game.
Now the Steelers have to rely on either Larry Foote to move to the outside or second year player Jason Worilds to take a huge starting role. The 49ers pound the ball between the tackles, and Frank Gore and Kendall Hunter will be targeting the outside spot that Harrison vacates.
He racked up $125,000 in fines last year, then took to Men’s Journal over the summer, hoisting a few firearms, and discussed his hatred for the man handing down the fines.
A suspension this time around was inevitable. Honestly, he should have gotten more than a game. Suh got two games for a stomp that did not cause an injury, while Harrison gets one game for giving McCoy a brain injury that rendered him unconscious.
He will never learn.
