After the Bronco's post-game celebration for their big win over the Steelers settles down, which may take a while (rumor has it Tebow turned Gatorade into wine in the locker room) attention is sure to turn to Eric Decker. The young wide-receiver (WR) went down with a knee injury (update: MRI confirmed a sprained MCL) after attempting to make a catch in Sunday's game.
This sort of stuff happens, after all it is professional football, and it's the playoffs. The stakes are high. But, the thing that is likely to stir up the most controversy may actually not be so much about Deck as it'll be about the man who made the tackle: James Harrison. The Steelers linebacker is no stranger to controversy, the guy has been fined damn near $200,00 for hits that the NFL considered illegal (all being helmet to helmet shots on defenseless player). This time around Harrison was nowhere close to making helmet to helmet contact on Decker. Instead, he went low… real low, taking out the WR with a shot at his left knee. Decker was forced to leave the game and did not return.
It's only a matter of time before the intentions of Harrison are called into question. It's important to note that as the rules currently stand, his hit was "clean". Granted, if you asked guys around the league what they thought about the hit, we're betting most would say there was nothing clean about it.
The league has pushed hard to protect players from concussions only to have some players, and a lot more fans, accuse the NFL of coddling players. The irony here is that if given the choice, we'd imagine more players would prefer to be hit high rather than low- because the knee injury will hurt your career "right now". The head injury, well, you don't have to worry about those for while, right?
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