According to Jason La Canfora, Raiders LB Vontaze Burfict‘s suspension for the rest of the season for a helmet-to-helmet hit on Colts TE Jack Doyle last week is likely to be upheld.
La Canfora reports Burfict has been warned repeatedly by the league beyond just formal fines and letters. Due to his extensive history of suspensions, fines and penalties for unsafe hits, the NFL felt they had no recourse but to remove him from the field to protect himself and other players.
“There is not another defensive player in the game who has anything close to his history with violent and unsafe play,” said one source within the league office per La Canfora. “There isn’t anything else like it. And it has to stop.”
According to Ian Rapoport, the NFL found another helmet-to-helmet hit during its review of last week’s Raiders vs Colts game that will also be factored into Burfict’s appeal.
“Hmmmm… I wonder how many other players they’ve done that for in the last two or three years,” Burfict’s agent Lamont Smith told Rapoport.
Smith is helping Burfict appeal under the grounds that the league is unfairly singling out Burfict. They plan to argue Burfict was just trying to make a football play and not intentionally hurt Doyle. Former Titans DT Albert Haynesworth was suspended five games for stomping on Cowboys C Andre Gurode‘s head in 2006.
“It’s different when someone is trying to make a football play, not a deliberate act where someone is trying to hurt an opponent,” Smith said. “Haynesworth was trying to hurt someone and he got five games.”
Burfict, 29, wound up signing on with the Bengals as an undrafted free agent out of Arizona State back in 2012. He was in the final year of his four-year, $20 million contract when the Bengals signed him to a three-year $38.68M extension last year.
Burfict was set to make base salaries of $5 million (2019), and $6.18 million (2020) over the remainder of the contract when the Bengals cut him during the offseason. He later signed a one-year, $2 million contract with the Raiders.
In 2019, Burfict has appeared in four games and recorded 18 tackles and a pass defense.
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