You don’t see this very often. Philadelphia Eagles safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson was fined three times by the NFL for his actions in Week 3’s win over the New Orleans Saints, losing half his game check for an illegal hit and two taunting infractions. He was a little too eager to get after his old team for his own good.
It had previously been reported that Gardner-Johnson was being fined for unnecessary roughness; he made a late hit on Saints running back Alvin Kamara after the play went out of bounds, and that came up to $11,255. But a league review found two instances of Gardner-Johnson crossing the line in taunting his opponents, which cost him two charges of $16,883 each.
Add that up and it’s $45,021 coming out of Gardner-Johnson’s paycheck. He has a base salary of $1,375,000 this year, per Over The Cap, which comes up to 17 weekly game checks of about $80,882 each (before taxes). So Gardner-Johnson really lost a little more than half of his game check because he was too hot under the collar. That’s some expensive trash talk. For his sake, it’s a good thing the late touchdown he gave up to Chris Olave didn’t cost Philly the game on top of it.
