Amendola's Hit on Fleming

I'm surprised I didn't see a thread on this already, so if I missed it please feel free to merge.

What are your overall thoughts on Amendola's hit on Jamell Fleming on the punt return? It looked brutal when I saw it live at a restaurant, but on replay it seems pretty clear that he led with his shoulder and didn't really make any helmet to helmet contact. Just a very hard hit that Fleming didn't see coming at all.

In the immediate aftermath on Twitter and even now in online articles, there are lots of people calling for him to be suspended, lots of comparisons to the Burfict hit on Brown last week. PFT posted that he very easily could have been ejected. After the game, Amendola said it was a clean hit and that he would appeal if he was fined.

Being the Pats, it wouldn't shock me at all for the NFL to try to suspend him. Do you expect that he'll hear from the league office?

I expect that he will be fined, just as any player would be for this type of a hit.

There's no chance of a suspension. Amendola has not had warnings in the past, nor did he show any malicious intent during this play. Any talk of suspension is either sour grapes or people (like PFT's Michael David Smith) who have already proven that they're quite biased against all things Patriots.

Imagine a suspension for attempting to keep the gunner from downing the punt...good lord. Don't listen to any mediots on this one.

I kept hearing the .. ahem ... announcers ... talk about leading with the crown of the helmet.

What? The crown of his helmet was visible throughout the hit! It was a shoulder-to-collar-bone hit at most. You can see him clearly trying to get lower than Fleming to avoid a shot to the head. You can't hit with your shoulder without your head getting there first.

He'll probably be fined even though it's not deserved. That was a good football play. He lead with his shoulder, the main point of contact was to the shoulder, but he did catch the head. Fleming kind of lowered himself into it too. That stuff happens in football and is sometimes unavoidable. I give credit to Amendola for knowing that what he did was a legal play, which shows situational awareness (even though the flag was thrown). But with the way the NFL is today he will probably be fined. He was clearly making a good football play and it just happened to look a lot worse than it was. No chance he'll be suspended.

It was a borderline call that was very similar to the one called against Fitzgerald in the Arizona/GB game.

Thought Dola hit him in the shoulder. But it was close.

If you're gonna do something like that, then the best time to do it is when it's a 2 yard penalty instead of a 15 yard penalty.

USA Today has written about Amendola getting a suspension. I didn't see it as head to head intent buy I do think the helmets touched.

supafly said:

I expect that he will be fined, just as any player would be for this type of a hit.

There's no chance of a suspension. Amendola has not had warnings in the past, nor did he show any malicious intent during this play. Any talk of suspension is either sour grapes or people (like PFT's Michael David Smith) who have already proven that they're quite biased against all things Patriots.

Imagine a suspension for attempting to keep the gunner from downing the punt...good lord. Don't listen to any mediots on this one.

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I blame it on the announcer as he called it a helmet to helmet hit and it wasn't the first or last time that he got it wrong. He was calling for penalties against the Patriots all night long. The trolls and anti-Pats media picked up on the helmet to helmet remark and went ape crazy.

The in-house media rules official thought it wasn't a penalty because the rules apply to the receiving team and not the defending team. I didn't see any helmet to head hit but I suppose that Amendola's helmet was close enough to the neck area that they could call unneccessary roughness.

I'm still waiting for Goodell and his cronies to create a distraction to try and derail the Pats run at the SB. They may try and suspend Amendola and/or Chandler Jones but I think they probably have something more devious planned.

So basically if we win the SB and Amendola isn't suspended, our ring would be forever tainted?

Canuck said:

I blame it on the announcer as he called it a helmet to helmet hit and it wasn't the first or last time that he got it wrong. He was calling for penalties against the Patriots all night long. The trolls and anti-Pats media picked up on the helmet to helmet remark and went ape crazy.

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That was probably Dan Fouts. There I noted a specific instance when Fouts called for unnecessary roughness penalties against the Pats (Ninkovich) for a hit on Alex Smith for "driving him all the way to the ground" and Mike Pereira corrected him on Twitter. He called for it again on a latter drive as well.

FWIW...and off topic...Pereira expects Hochuli and Vinovich will be the Championship game officials with Blakeman or Corrente in the SB.

StockingAnarchyNumber12 said:

So basically if we win the SB and Amendola isn't suspended, our ring would be forever tainted?

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I feel like that play was a turning point actually - Dola took a cheap shot but it was borderline within the rules. It showed that the pats were playing HARD and I think that KC tried to respond but were too soft.

Fouts was talking ragtme nonsense at a number of points. On that play I recall, as the slo-mo is showing shoulder contact only, Fouts voicing over it with "that's a clear helmet to the face," even while the film he's describing shows nothing of the sort. Worst effort by Fouts ever.

I loved the play. At first, it happened so fast I didn't process it...but think I realized that's all Danny could to avoid the guy downing it.
Overlooked in all of this was how awesome the punt was.

Anyone else catch when Fouts claimed Hightower gave a late out out of bounds? **** him. He was pissed that the Pats won.

Galeb said:

Anyone else catch when Fouts claimed Hightower gave a late out out of bounds? **** him. He was pissed that the Pats won.

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Hence forth he shall be known as Dan Pouts.

Canuck said:

The in-house media rules official thought it wasn't a penalty because the rules apply to the receiving team and not the defending team. I didn't see any helmet to head hit but I suppose that Amendola's helmet was close enough to the neck area that they could call unneccessary roughness.

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Mike Carey gets most calls wrong. It's a running joke in my family. Even my wife and kids, who aren't serious fans, know and point it out when he makes a judgment that it will probably go the other way. He said that the call should be overturned when Brady made his scramble to the pylon, and he later focused on the technicalities of the defenseless receiver rule, when the penalty was for a blindside block. (The announcers relayed this information, which I assume came from the Ever Equanimous Dean Blandino, soon after the fact.)

I thought Fouts was decent. He has more of a pro-offense bias than an anti-Patriots bias, which is to be expected of the main man of the Air Coryell attack. He certainly had plenty of non-begrudging praise for Brady, Edelman, and the Pats offense in general.

Why did Dola hit him?