During the Tampa Bay Buccaneers game yesterday against their division rivals, the New Orleans Saints, the game became less than friendly after an altercation began between the two teams in the second half.
After a questionable no-call on a pass from Tom Brady to Scotty Miller, Saints star cornerback Marshon Lattimore began a verbal altercation with multiple players and coaches on the Bucs.
This eventually led to Lattimore and Brady exchanging words and Bucs running back Leonard Fournette giving Lattimore a body shove to get him away from Brady. Lattimore immediately responded by throwing what looked like a punch, but could have just been a hard shove at Fournette’s head.
Bucs wide receiver, Mike Evans, then came running in and shoved Lattimore to the ground, leading to both him and Lattimore being ejected from the game.
Today, the league announced that Evans will be suspended for one game as a result of his actions, however, no other player, including Lattimore will receive any punishment.
What makes the decision to only suspend Evans for a game and not Lattimore is beyond this writer.
The league said that he Evans hit Lattimore when he had no clue a hit was coming. This completely ignores the fact that at the time Evans pushed Lattimore, he had literally just aggressively shoved Fournette in the face and was directly yelling in the face of Brady.
The league acting like Lattimore was just walking on the sidelines and got blindsided by Evans is ridiculous and devoid of the reality of what occurred.
The fact that Evans got suspended isn’t an awful decision by the league. There is a case that what he did certainly crossed a line, and while some may still see a suspension as an overreaction by the league, it is at least understandable if and only if the league is going to suspend Lattimore as well.
They both made equally aggressive moves against other players and have a long past of these types of interactions, so suspending them both for a game would make sense.
Instead, fans are left with yet another illogical decision by the NFL that somehow continues to make poor decision after poor decision when handing out punishments to players.
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