The Kansas City Chiefs had a lot to say about the hit that knocked WR JuJu Smith-Schuster out of the Week 10 game against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
With just over six minutes to go in the second quarter, Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes targeted Smith-Schuster on a routine third-down play. Smith-Schuster caught the ball and was just about to turn upfield only to be blindsided by Jaguars S Andre Cisco. The hit left Smith-Schuster concussed and out for the remainder of the game.
Officials initially threw a penalty flag on what appeared to be a clear hit to the head of a defenseless player. They ended up picking up the flag, with no penalty for a hit on a defenseless player called, leaving the Chiefs to punt the ball away.
“Well, as long as there is contact to the head, it doesn’t need to be in the game,” Chiefs HC Andy Reid said of the play. “It looked like there was contact to the head from where I was standing, but I’m not the one making that call.”
In the pool report after the game, referee Brad Rogers told ESPN’s Adam Teicher that officials determined the defender “braced for impact and hit shoulder into shoulder” and they didn’t feel it was a “use of helmet foul.” In the same breath, he confirmed that Smith-Schuster was considered to be in the defenseless posture. Basically, the contact from Cisco was not deemed to be “unnecessary.”
“They said that he hit with his shoulder,” Reid said. “That’s why they picked (the flag) up, but when you hit somebody in the head you’re hitting them in the head. They said it was shoulder-to-shoulder, is what they said. Obviously, he was in a pretty bad position there for hitting shoulder-to-shoulder.”
Smith-Schuster went into the fencing response, which fans will remember from the Tua Tagovailoa incident earlier this season, after suffering the blow. Reid said that he tried to reason with the officials after witnessing that.
“That’s not a good feeling, at all,” Reid said of watching Smith-Schuster in the fencing response. “That’s what I tried to explain to the officials there, guys don’t get hit in the shoulder and lay around like that right there. There is more to it. Some way the head was involved. That’s what the rule is put in for, (to protect players) against that type of thing.”
A few plays after the hit on Smith-Schuster, Cisco was involved in another collision with Chiefs WR Marquez Valdes-Scantling. He says that he was surprised there weren’t penalties called on both plays.
“Those kinds of hits are not welcome in this game,” Valdes-Scantling told reporters after the game. “We’re all playing and putting our lives on the line every single play and you never want to see a guy go down like that. For me to come in and get the same kind of hit two plays later, there is no flag, no penalty. Are they protecting us? As a wideout, there are not many things that we can do when the ball is in the air to protect ourselves.”
Valdes-Scantling is left begging the question of whether he and his teammate were properly protected by the officials. It’s reasonable after how things transpired in Week 10.
As for Patrick Mahomes, he admitted that it was a scary play at the moment and that everyone was angry about it. He didn’t feel either hit was “dirty”, but he did feel that Smith-Schuster’s hit resulted in helmet-to-helmet contact and should have been penalized.
“Obviously, I don’t think there was any ill intent from the player,” Mahomes said. “He’s just trying to knock the ball loose and do stuff like that. Obviously, there was some helmet-to-helmet contact and we want to get that out of the league as much as possible for player safety. So, if we can review that and make it to be where there is some type of penalty or something, you want to get that stuff out of the league as much as possible.”
Mahomes recognizes that defenders are trying to make a play too, but player safety is paramount and must come first, especially when it comes to helmet-to-helmet contact and concussions.
“It’s so hard in this league,” Mahomes said. “These guys on defense are playing too. They’re trying to do their best to stop us. But, I mean, by the rules, if it is helmet-to-helmet, it’s supposed to be a flag. I know that guy wasn’t trying to and that it’s a bang-bang call that doesn’t always go your way, but you want to do your best to get that stuff out of the league so we can have those guys playing and (we’re) being safe.”
We’ll see if the NFL agrees with how their officials handled the Smith-Schuster play later this week when the league hands out fines to players. For now, all the Chiefs can hope for is that this influences how helmet-to-helmet contact and head injuries are officiated moving forward.
