WHEN THE NFL IS OVERRUN BY CONCUSSIONS, AN EXECUTIVE DEFENDS HIS GOON
Nick Caserio was hellbent on supporting Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair after a three-game suspension — and conveniently forgot football players can lose careers and life quality with a violent hit
Why must we use a bullhorn? The NFL should be more disturbed than the rest of us that its concussion rate is on the rise. If anyone dares to trust league data as credible, the number climbed to 219 last season from 213 the season before. Tua Tagovailoa only extended his career after three concussions — at least — because he ignored experts. Know how many players have suffered seven, eight, nine brain injuries? Or more?
Most.
So the question isn’t why the league suspended Houston linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair for three games. Why wasn’t he banned for an entire season after he used his face mask to violently crash into Jacksonville quarterback Trevor Lawrence?
“You were involved in a play that the (NFL) considers unacceptable and a serious violation of the playing rules," wrote Jon Runyan, the league’s top cop. “Video shows you striking the head/neck area of … Lawrence after he clearly goes down in a feet-first slide. You led with your forearm and helmet and delivered a forceful blow to the head/neck area of your opponent when you had time and space to avoid such contact.”
Three games is badness. Al-Shaair will return for the final regular-season week and play in the postseason. He’ll be fined $265,000. This was the third time he was fined this season, after he participated in an out-of-bounds hit and the punching of an opponent. He’s the biggest goon in the sport, as underlined by Runyan, who said, “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.”
When the Texans should be humbled by a brief punishment, their general manager voiced hideous audacity. Lawrence was so traumatized by the collision — his hands appeared to exhibit a “fencing response” — that the league was forced to consider Al-Shaair’s pattern of behavior. This was no time for Nick Caserio to show an illogical understanding of basic rules. The league should have stepped in and fined him, as well, for prioritizing his team over much larger safety concerns.
“For the league to make some of the commentary about lack of sportsmanship, lack of coachability and lack of paying attention to the rules, quite frankly it’s embarrassing,” Caserio said. “And talk about a player who’s never been suspended, never been ejected, so now we’re saying he’s going to be suspended for three games? I probably speak for a lot of teams, not only the Houston Texans, but I think all teams ask for is consistency from the league. And I'd say in this situation, quite frankly, there's no consistency at all relative to the level of discipline that's been handed down.”
Would he like a no-game suspension? Lawrence might sit out the rest of the season, yet Al-Shaair will keep playing and torture somebody else. If he was with another team and mistreated the Texans, wouldn’t Caserio torch him? Oh, the madness that occupies football executives in December as their teams prepare for the postseason.
“What we take umbrage with is the picture that’s been painted about Azeez, his intentions, who he is as a person — quite frankly, it’s bulls–t and it’s unfair to the individual, it’s unfair to the organization and we love everything about Azeez Al-Shaair, what he means to this team, what he brings to this team,” Caserio said. “He was elected a captain after being here for four months. So, again, we have a lot of respect for our opponents, we have a lot of respect for other teams in this league, we want to do things the right way. To speak on Aziz’s intentionality of what he intended to do, some of the comments that have been made, quite frankly it’s embarrassing. We’re going to support Aziz, we love everything about hm, we’re glad he’s a part of this team.”
He was backed by Texans coach DeMeco Ryans, who somehow blamed Lawrence for initiating the hit. “We stand behind Azeez and everything that came from that,” Ryans said. “Of course, he unfortunately hit the quarterback. But it's two-fold, right? A lot of the quarterbacks in this day and age, they try to take advantage of the rule where they slide late and they try to get an extra yard. Now, you're a defender, a lot of onus is on the defender, whether it's on the sideline or it's on the quarterback, you don't know what a guy is thinking. You don't know if a guy's staying up and he's continuing to run. You don't know. And then you get a late slide and you hit the guy. Unfortunate that Trevor got hurt. We hope Trevor's okay. But also, if we're sliding, we have to get down.”
To repeat, he said Lawrence must “get down.” Is Ryans watching the same show as the rest of us? Careers end — and lives slip into decline — after one ugly shot. The public beyond Houston sides with the league, with Al-Shaair posting online abuse in which he’s “been called every single name in the book from reporters with their hands ready for a story to find their villan (sic), to racist and Islamophobic fans and people, you don’t know my heart nor my character which I don’t need to prove to any of you.”
This isn’t about race. This isn’t about Islam. All we see is a dog-dirty defender playing brutal ball. It only hurts the Texans, still an underdog in the power-packed AFC, that their leaders must support him. We don’t need respected people backing a repetitive bully by referring to the league as “embarrassing” and full of “bulls–t” when, in this case, only Roger Goodell’s top cop turned out to be soft.
What if Al-Shaair had smacked Tagovailoa and knocked him into retirement?
Try a ban for life.
###
Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.