Dirtiest NFL Players – Brutal Injuries on Purpose

The NFL has never been called the good guys’ league. Besides their great sports talent and skills, the players have been famous for their scandals. Everything you can imagine has already happened, drugs, murder, sexual abuse, bribery, etc.

However, in this article, we have collected some of the dirtiest NFL players, who either accepted money for brutal attacks or just shamelessly ignored the rules. Although they are not professional wrestlers, they get money to tackle their opponents. Is it wrong or a necessary evil?

The NFL and Injuries Go Hand in Hand

In American football, collisions undoubtedly have a fundamental role in a match; they are among the most spectacular elements of the game. However, in order to protect the physical integrity of the players for as long as possible, the rules do not allow any harmful hits. The fact that doctors are listing more and more evidence of the professional NFL career and the so-called chronic traumatic encephalopathy go hand in hand is bad news for the players. CTE, for short, is a neurological disease resulting from frequent head injuries.

Since 2013, it has been prohibited in the NFL to strike an opponent with the top of the helmet. A few years ago, the rules were tightened even further. In the past, they gave a 15-yard penalty for such a hit, but after the new regulation, the offending player can get an immediate suspension as punishment, or a ban can be handed out afterward in case of unjustified roughness. Bet365 Sportsbook lists the latest changes and rules!

Dirtiest NFL Players

Danny Trevathan clearly crossed that line when he targeted Packers wide receiver, Davante Adams. The blow hit Adams directly in the head, who collapsed and had to leave the field on a stretcher. Trevathan’s move was illegal not only because he went for the head but also because it happened in a situation where the play was already over. That is, the other defenders stopped his progress. 

If that’s not enough, the player was also defenseless, and he couldn’t prepare for such a blow. Adams suffered a hit so hard that even his mouth guard fell out and needed medical attention for minutes before rushing him to the hospital, where he was stabilized and recovering. He had a concussion, but the team’s head coach, Mike McCarthy, reassured everyone about him getting better at online sportsbook sites in the US. 

Regardless of using his own helmet to cause another player a head injury, Trevathan said that his move was not intentional or a dirty hit. It’s hard to say, whether it was intentional, or not, but if he did not knock Adams unconscious, the referee wouldn’t have thrown the flag on the play, and everyone would have forgotten this incident. So, the player got a penalty for the result, not the hit. Even though they try to protect the players from head traumas, the system leaves much to be desired!

Unnecessary Brutality on the Field

The Oakland Raiders linebacker, Vontaze Burfict, punched tight end Jack Doyle in the second quarter of the fourth round of a game. He banged his head into his helmet on the run while Doyle kneeled on the ground after a catch. After the incident, the referee immediately sent Burfict off the field. He jogged into the locker room waving and throwing kisses at the audience, and later the NFL management decided to suspend him for the entire season. 

Jon Runyan, the vice president, said that he violated Rule 12, which states that it is a foul if a player does a helmet-to-helmet collision, especially if it was completely unnecessary. According to Bet365 Sportsbook, the 31-year-old Burfict has already been penalized several times for similarly dirty moves. It was the most severe penalty in NFL history for a player for unsportsmanlike behavior on the field, so he is definitely among the dirtiest NFL players! If scandals, then one of the most popular players got into one too, check out our article about the Tom Brady betting scandal!

Dirtiest NFL Players

The match between the Cleveland Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers ended up in a huge mess a few years ago. On the game’s last play, defensive player Myles Garrett collided with Mason Rudolph after bringing the quarterback to the ground. Garrett pulled Rudolph’s helmet off during the attack, then hit him with it in the head. To make matters worse, the Steelers quarterback suffered a concussion in a game a few weeks before. The NFL suspended Garret for six games and had to pay a fine.

Pittsburgh Steelers’ Cam Heyward punched Los Angeles Chargers’ American football player, Justin Herbert, in the stomach in a dirty way during an NFL game. The incident happened in the fourth quarter of the match when Heyward took Herbert to the ground. However, the Steelers player did not get off the Chargers player and hit his opponent in the gut.

In the second quarter of the Minnesota Vikings-Green Bay Packers NFL game, Brian Robinson kicked his opponent T.J. Langot. They stopped the game when Robinson fell to the ground and kicked Lang in the groin from a lying position. The referee saw the unsportsmanlike attack up close, so there was no question that the Vikings would receive a penalty. The Packers were able to get 15 yards closer. Robinson took to Twitter to apologize to Lang, the fans, and the NFL. He claimed that he was not a dirty NFL player and didn’t aim for his groin on purpose.

The Bounty Scandal and Gregg Williams 

The brutal tackles and hits are part of playing American football. Fans clap, gasp, or enjoy them, but if a player doesn’t do it in the heat of the moment but plans the attacks and accepts money for it, it’s a different story then. In 2009, the NFL began an investigation since there were too many injuries back then. They announced that there were signs of bribery. 

One of the two most suspicious cases involved a 2009 Divisional Playoff game in which Arizona Cardinals quarterback, Kurt Warner, was brutally knocked down in a tackle that the rules allowed. The head and administrator of the entire system was Gregg Williams, the team’s defensive coordinator. He and another 22 to 27 Saints players were accused of putting bounties on star players they wanted out of the game. Every injury had its own tariff! They paid 1,500 dollars for a knockout, a thousand dollars if the opponent had to leave on a stretcher. 

According to some rumors, it was not uncommon when the bounty prize was higher than 50 thousand dollars. They kept track of the payments, and the head coach, agents, one of the assistant coaches, and the general manager not only knew about everything, but they set the bounty money on certain players themselves. Kurt Warner also became the victim of these dirty NFL players who got money for causing damage.

Dirtiest NFL Players

In the already mentioned 2009 finals, Jonathan Vilma, the defensive player of the New Orleans Saints, offered 10 thousand dollars for the teammate who would knock Brett Favre, the Viking starting QB, out of the game. According to online sportsbook sites in the US, it was known on some level that similar bounty programs were and are operating throughout the American Football League and even in other sports. Nothing proves this better than the statements and tweets of former and current NFL players. 

According to Chris Harris, this phenomenon is part of the NFL culture. It happens to every team, only now they caught someone by accident. One of the victims, Kurt Warner, was not surprised, but it bothered him that the dirtiest NFL players received money for it. However, Shawne Merriman was sure that a bounty put on him caused his torn knee ligaments. It is worth reading the reactions of several players.  It immediately becomes obvious that we are not talking about a one-time phenomenon but a well-established tradition.

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