The Ringer NFL Show - The Myles Garrett–Mason Rudolph Incident | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: November 15, 2019

Browns defensive end Myles Garrett was ejected from Thursday's game against the Steelers for swinging a helmet at Pittsburgh quarterback Mason Rudolph. The NFL has suspended Garrett indefinitely, with a minimum of at least this regular season and playoffs. We provide initial reactions, context, and analysis from the incident. Hosts: Robert Mays and Kevin Clark Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the NFL show is brought to you by State Farm. When you need a game plan for protection, State Farm agents are here to have. With personalized service, agents are available to talk in person, over text or through the State Farm app. So go with the one coverage and agents you can count on. Find an agent in your neighborhood today. State Farm, talk to an agent today. Before we get to the show, in the middle of recording, we learned that Miles Garrett has been suspended without pay indefinitely for a minimum of the rest of the regular season and postseason. Pouncey's been suspended for three games.

and Larry Ogunjobe has been spent it for one game. Now, on to the show. Welcome to The Ringer NFL show. I'm Robert Mays. It is Friday morning, and we are here to talk about what happened at the end of the Brown Steelers game. Kevin, this is not something we normally do. We do now record on Friday mornings, but we felt like the events that took place as that game wound down warranted us probably having a reaction. Yeah, we're going to be talking about that play for a long time.

We're going to be talking about it for the rest of Miles Garrett's career for the rest of the Brown season. It is one of the most unexpected things I've seen on the football field. I mean, there's a handful of plays I've seen in my life where I've said, oh, my God, too. I think, you know, Albert Hainsworth's stomp of Andre Gerard, which was the previous incident like this. He got five games. I mean, that was the incident that just popped into my head as I saw it. It was, you know, there's a lot to unpack here. And it was definitely one of the strangest plays of the decade.

I was sitting there last night, kind of in the aftermath of it all. I watched it live, and I had a certain reaction to it live, which was, what is Marquis Pouncey doing? Because I didn't see what had transpired earlier. So watching the replays, there was just kind of a shock. I was like, oh, my God, I can't believe that just happened. And after processing it the first time, I was kind of sitting on my couch, looking at what people were saying, and just kind of thinking about it over and over again, just considering what just went down and how rare it really was. I wasn't shocked and appalled

the way that some people seem to be there was a guy bleeding out of his ear last night so I was certainly shocked I was certainly shocked but I wasn't I wasn't ready to I mean there was some there was some pretty I saw Greg Rosenthal talk about this this morning

he said that you know we're all the applications for the bad take Olympics are we're all set there we don't need any more applications for that we're all good I was shocked this was not a normal football play I was taken aback probably but I wasn't one of these guys who say, where are the police?

You know, where we got to charge? We've got to prosecute this guy. I just think that this is, this was a shocking football play, but I don't think this is, you know, I don't think it's the worst thing it's ever happened on a football field.

It's, it's among them this decade. I mean, listen, the game has changed. This era of football is completely different. And in this era, it might be, you know,

I would say of the last, you know, 10 years, this might be the most shocking thing I've seen in the football field. But it's certainly not the worst thing. it's ever happened in a football game. Yeah, it's the most shocking thing I've seen outside of the limits of play.

You see massive hits and dirty hits and, you know, Vontes Berwick was in the league for a while. There's been some pretty awful stuff that's happened. Vantes Berwick was suspended for an entire season earlier this year, and that was the longest suspension ever aside from that Hainesworth suspension. The Hainesworth suspension was five games, and then Berwick was suspended for essentially a season. So those are the two sort of suspensions to go off of when you're thinking about potential violation. Yeah, I will talk about that in a second.

I just think that the difference between this and just, let's say, a hit like the one that Demarius Randall got thrown out of the game for, the difference to me is that you walk into a game expecting that could be possible. I don't think you walk into a game expecting that if your helmet falls off, someone will swing it at you. There's a slightly different calculus there. And I understand that there's a certain level of violence that comes with the game, but I do think there's a level of expectation when you walk into a football game that

was somewhat violated last night. Yeah, so Antonio Smith did this to Richie Incognito in 2013. He was spent it for the rest of the preseason plus one regular season game. That was different. That was literally just kind of like one, two. Smith ripped the helmet off and then just swung it to incognito immediately. It wasn't chasing after him like a UFC fighter or something with a helmet in your hand. So I think that that's, that was a little bit different, but it was still the same general

principle was just a guy swinging a helmet at an opponent. after he'd ripped it off. Yeah, it's, it is, it is definitely not something I expected. You know, I mean, I've spent some time with Miles Garrett. And I think one thing that doesn't matter in this is that Miles Garrett, uh, is a nice person off the field. Like that was, there was a lot of talk about that last night where it was like, oh, Miles Garrett is not the kind of guy who does this.

He writes poetry. He, you know, likes dinosaurs. All the things that he and I have talked about. But I don't think that that matters. Like there's a lot of nice people who can completely, either completely lose their cool on the field at one point or play really physically. I mean, listen, there's a lot of UFC fighters who are great guys outside the cage. I mean, that doesn't mean that they're less aggressive on the field. You know, Miles Garrett had a Jets game

earlier this season where he got a handful of, you know, basically a handful of bad hits, cheap hits. He has aggression. He talked about how he talked about after that game, how basically he knows he's going to get roughing the pastoralies because of, the quarterbacks to protected, all that stuff. So I think he played with a certain edge, and I think that that has gotten to him. And I think that it's interesting to me, I did a profile of him before last season.

And Clyde Simmons, who was then his defensive line coach, literally told me that at that point, August 2018, so he'd only played his rookie year, at that point, Miles Garrett was letting opponents get, away with too many things. And he wasn't saying, you're not going to be able to take liberty to something, all that stuff. And I wonder if there was some overcorrection correction, because it seemed like that was going to be a coaching point at that time. And I wonder if there, if, you know, Greg Williams, Clyde Simmons, those types of guys, because is what Simmons told me. I wonder if

there was some, hey, if someone comes after you, you got to go after then 10 times over. I don't know the answer to that. I just know what happened in the course of writing that and talking to the coaching staff and what they wanted to improve on. The quotes are in the story if you want to read it. But that's that also crept into my mind a little bit is, is how Miles Garrett approaches a football game now. Because this is not, that was not normal what we saw last night. And it was, you know, again, one of the most heinous things we've seen in a long time on a football field. It's strange to say this.

And I'm not, I don't know how to put it in the correct terms, but there's almost a sense of sadness that comes over this. when it comes to Miles Garrett because this is a guy who, no matter how nice he is or whatever, he is a potential star in the league. He's the number one overall pick in the draft. He was going to be somebody who had a fantastic career and still will. But no matter what happens now for the rest of Miles Garrett's time in the league, we will talk about this.

This will come up. I'm not sure there's anything he can accomplish as a player that will not make this in the, that will not put this incident in the first two sentences of whatever retrospective of his career, eventually exists. And that's tough. That is unfortunate. It's one moment. And again, it's, consequences are real and consequences should exist. But it's really just a sad thing that this had to happen. And now we appall on everything he ever does no matter what. And that sucks.

Well, I will say this. If there's one thing, this was Miles Garrett's fault. Like him doing that was Miles Garrett's fault. I don't necessarily, whether or not Rudolph started it is immaterial to this, that particular point, which is there's a lot of really crappy, you know, between the whistle stuff that happens on a football field all the time. But what doesn't happen is Miles Garrett swing, someone taking a helmet off and swinging at their opponent. That doesn't happen. It was a normal football fight until that happened. It was a normal football fight. Kind of run of the mill happens, you know, across the NFL all the time. And then, Miles Garrett swung a helmet. So that is his fault. And so I will say that if this follows him

around for the rest of his career, at least he was sort of the author of his destiny in that one. I mean, it was it was Miles Garrett's fault to escalate that. And, you know, again, if there's I, I up until this point, um, had a different idea of Miles Garrett having spent a little bit of time with him. I talked to him a little bit in training camp, um, just catching up him a little bit. little bit, but I just didn't, you know, I don't, again, that doesn't matter. There are a lot of guys who are great people off the field and on the field, you know, don't, don't do things the right way. It happens all the time. I'm with you when it comes to Miles Garabing, the author of his own destiny. I think that everything that has happened right now is deserved. And a lot of the reaction has

been somewhat deserved. But it's, I guess the adjective I would use is unfortunate. It's just unfortunate. It's unfortunate. Any of this has to happen. To him, to the league, All of it. You know, I think that the problem with a play like this from my perspective is NFL players are put in vulnerable positions all game. And there's a thin line between the type of violence that happens on the field and the type of violence that can change a person's that can kill a person, quite frankly, that can kill a person. Because swinging a helmet, you know, in the right circumstance could cause serious, serious injury. I mean, people die in boxing more than they should. this just happened a couple weeks ago with the boxing in Patrick Day. You see a guy fight and then all of a sudden he's dead, right? That happened in some sports. It doesn't happen in football. And a lot of that is because they're in the case of football,

there's just sort of understanding that these sort of things don't happen. You can, there would be way more serious injuries if, you know, there were players, there were more players like Vantes Burrfect who were literally just head hunting, right? Or if this sort of play happened all of the time. The football is already a dangerous, ghoulish game where we probably don't talk enough about the violence, probably don't talk enough about the long-term injuries, not even just the head injuries,

but injuries beyond that. You know, it is a, his, ghoulish is probably the right word for it. But one of the, one of the most important parts of football is that, is that there's probably an understanding between players

that you don't go to these lengths to try to hurt somebody else and intentionally and not in the course of play. if that if if if garret's type of play were repeated more than once it would you know it would ruin the sport and so i think that that's that's why i think the the the play is so offensive it almost reminds me a little bit of the hockey stuff um where you know a guy like marty mcstorley's you know hitting a guy with in the head with a stick or whatever it's like it's already it's already a dangerous game and the aim is to not make it more dangerous and that's why i found that that particular play so offensive. That's kind of what I was saying at the beginning is that you come into a football game as an

NFL player with an understanding. There's kind of a pact between players of we know what we're getting into, but there's a certain level of respect that exists between us. If it's within the rhythm of a game, even if you get a guy helmet to helmet that's just a bang, bang play where you're trying to control yourself, whatever it happens. Those things are part of football and they're an understood part of football, even if they are a ghoulish part of football. This is not. And I think that's the difference to me. That's why it was so shocking. That's why. It's why. I think there's been such a reaction to it because even if the level of violence isn't necessarily more egregious than some of the hits that happened last night, those hits are almost an agreed upon part of partaking in the sport.

And this just isn't. Yep. Anything else? This is the least consequential part of this whole thing. But we probably should discuss what this means for the Browns, both this season and moving forward. Well, I mean, Miles Garrett is probably the best player. I think he absolutely has been. Yeah. I mean,

he was defensive player of the year candidate. We both picked him to be the defensive player of the year before the season. First overall pick. I mean, this is if they had, if they had any momentum in this season, it's been stalled.

And so, look, this is the least inconsequential part, as you said, but this is a disaster for the Browns. Yeah. And I think Baker Mayfield said something really interesting last night. I mean,

he said it feels like we lost. And that's kind of been the Browns season. every step forward comes with two steps back. And I know this is an entirely different conversation. It's entirely different topic. It's much more serious. But it does just feel like everything has kind of fallen apart for them. And this is just the next step in that.

It's been such a frustrating year all around. And this just takes it to an entirely different level. Yep. Agree. Bad night all around. Yeah. Bad night for the league. Bad night for everybody.

All right. That's all we got, guys. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back on Sunday night. We appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening to the Ringer NFL show on the Ringer podcast network. We'll talk to you later.