{"id":291671,"date":"2025-11-18T02:50:05","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T02:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/291671\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T02:50:05","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T02:50:05","slug":"spit-happens-and-nfl-players-have-a-surprising-sensitivity-when-it-does","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/291671\/","title":{"rendered":"Spit Happens, and NFL Players Have a Surprising Sensitivity When it Does"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that we\u2019ve unclutched our pearls and wrung ourselves dry of takes on why Ja\u2019Marr Chase shouldn\u2019t have spit on Jalen Ramsey<\/a>\u2014this after unclutching our pearls and wringing ourselves dry of takes on why Jalen Carter shouldn\u2019t have spit on Dak Prescott<\/a> in Week 1\u2014can we have a conversation about how ridiculous this is?\u00a0<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve now lost two of the NFL\u2019s best players for two critical games\u2014Chase will miss a game against the white-hot Patriots that could effectively end the Bengals\u2019 season a week before Joe Burrow claims he may be able to make a return to the field, and Carter did not play in the Eagles\u2019 season-opener against the division-rival Cowboys\u2014because of something we find relatively unpleasant but that causes no bodily harm.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The heightened sensitivity to spitting as this honor crime fit for the International Criminal Court, for someone who both has young (and ridiculous) children and who played high school football in semi-rural Pennsylvania, is unfathomable (there\u2019s a lot of spitting going on here). There are so many more terrible things that you can do to someone, and so many more damaging things you can do to someone both physically or psychologically, that hoisting spitting into its own category of disrespect feels like another classic example of the NFL legislating itself into another locked box for the sake of showmanship.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2017, Patriots tight end and future Hall of Famer Rob Gronkowski was suspended as many games as Chase for angrily elbow-dropping the full weight of his 265-pound body onto Bills cornerback Tre\u2019Davious White\u2019s neck while White was hunched on the ground<\/a>. At the right angle, this could have paralyzed White or caused some sort of serious spinal cord injury. After his playing career was done, Gronkowski admitted that his frustration was born out of an inability to reach an incentive in his contract<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2018, Eagles linebacker Nigel Bradham was suspended as many games as Chase for striking a hotel worker in the nose with a closed fist because he was unhappy with the \u201cspeed of service<\/a>.\u201d Bradham was charged with aggravated assault. During his playing days, he was 6′ 2″, 241 pounds. That blow could have easily killed or seriously harmed the worker.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2018, the Jaguars\u2019 Dante Fowler Jr. was suspended as many games as Chase for a series of events that included \u201crefereeing a fight between his girlfriend and the mother of his child<\/a>,\u201d assaulting a police officer and additional charges of battery and petit theft.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Chase and Carter literally expectorated a normal-looking amount of saliva that landed, in Carter\u2019s case, on the collar of Prescott\u2019s jersey and, in Chase\u2019s case, on the team logo patch of Ramsey\u2019s jersey.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This was, by the way, after Ramsey clobbered Chase in the neck and back while Chase was airborne in a totally defenseless position.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Which, while we\u2019re on the subject, is so much more disrespectful than spitting on someone! I cannot begin to understand the take of former Steelers linebacker James Harrison, who said on his podcast that, \u201cIt ain\u2019t nothing more disrespectful than spitting on somebody. If you spit on me, I\u2019mma find out where you at in the offseason<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a perfectly fine attitude to have, but where is all the outrage for the Bountygate Saints, who were found guilty of passing along cash payments to players as incentive for injuring opponents. If you get injured, it can impact your career, your earnings and your ability to take care of both yourself and your family when you\u2019re done playing. What is more disrespectful than taking a fistfull of cash for yourself in an attempt to prevent another man from buying his kids new school clothes or sending them to college? Kurt Warner literally retired two weeks after getting hit in the chest by a Saints player during Bountygate (he was knocked out of the game but did come back).\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is head stomping, ankle twisting and, yeah, injury report scrolling that may inform a player on how to hit an opponent in just the right way to keep him out of a game. These injuries can cost a team and player millions of dollars. It can sink gambling fortunes and fantasy football empires.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But spitting, man, you may have to pick up an extra tub of OxiClean at Costco in order to erase the horror. No, seriously, you have to blot the affected area first. Warm water. Tumble dry low.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying that spitting is great or that I enjoyed the times I was spit on in my life (no judgment if you have). But I am saying that this is an absolutely filthy game that brings people to the brink of sanity on a play-by-play basis and ratchets up the pressure, rhetoric and conditions in which anger festers for our enjoyment. People are going to get mad enough to spit on each other. We\u2019re lucky that they\u2019re spitting on each other and not, I don\u2019t know, ripping off an opposing player\u2019s helmet and wielding it like a battle axe (which resulted in a suspension five games longer for Myles Garrett than \u2026 spitting on someone).\u00a0<\/p>\n

At most, spitting should be a large monetary fine because when held up against the litany of legal, illegal and shades-of-gray violence that take place on and off an NFL field, it is completely and totally harmless. Gross? Sure. But for players bathed in each other\u2019s sweat, with their hands underneath each others\u2019 backsides, tumbled together in smelly dogpiles the size of small mountains where God (and Christian Wilkins<\/a>) knows what takes place, there is really no leg to stand on when drawing the line at sanitation. Spit all you want. I\u2019ll leave the head smashing, nose punching, helmet pummeling, ankle twisting and head-shotting to the rest of you folks out there, protecting your \u2026 honor \u2026 or whatever you call it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

More NFL From Sports Illustrated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now that we\u2019ve unclutched our pearls and wrung ourselves dry of takes on why Ja\u2019Marr Chase shouldn\u2019t have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-291671","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}