The Cleveland Browns and their fans have an uneasy history with New York Jets safety Minkah Fitzpatrick.
It was Fitzpatrick, after all, who, while with the Pittsburgh Steelers, effectively ended Cleveland running back Nick Chubb’s career with a direct hit to Chubb’s knee during a Monday night game in 2023. So it is understandable that Cleveland fans may take a dim view of Fitzpatrick.
That history resurfaced in the first quarter of Sunday’s game, when Fitzpatrick committed a facemask penalty so severe
it tore the helmet from wide receiver KC Concepcion’s head. Then, just a few plays later, Fitzpatrick delivered a head shot to Concepcion on a pass play that knocked him out of the game with a concussion.
On Monday, head coach Todd Monken was asked about the play and took the position that it was all just a part of the game:
“It was a bang-bang play. He made a nice break on the ball. It is unfortunate what happened, but that is going to happen in games, and I’ve gone against, like I said last night, Minkah a bunch, and I’ve always had a ton of respect for him, and I’ve never understood him to be a player that’s trying to injure other players. I’ve never known him to be that. I know he’s a guy that plays the ball well in the air and is aggressive, and unfortunately it ended up being a bang-bang play, and it cost us a player.”
Monken has certainly been around the game a long time. And while it is perhaps a bit odd that he chose not to back his player, Monken has seen a lot of football.
Not everyone saw it that way, however, as Cleveland offensive tackle Dawand Jones had a very different opinion on the matter, one that he had no problem sharing with Fitzpatrick in the moment, according to cleveland.com:
“I just told him that (expletive)’s (expletive) up. I was there on the field when he did that (expletive) to Chubb, and he just told me, ‘It’s football,’ and I’m not down with that (expletive).
“That (expletive)’s not football at that point; you’re just out there trying to hurt people. I’m not cool with that. But I’m gonna tell you to your face, flat out how it is. You can like it or not and get down with it, or you could do something about it. And you see what he did.”
On Monday, we took to social media to question why the NFL puts up with Fitzpatrick’s style of play. And to put it mildly, that did not go over very well with fans of the Jets and Steelers.
Which got us to thinking: are we wrong about this? Was it really just a good, hard football play? Have we gone soft, as one person put it, from watching English Premier League football?
Then it struck us! Our readers are bright people; they would know!
So here is a poll about the hit so you can have your say – is Fitzpatrick a cheap-shot artist, or simply an aggressive but misunderstood player?
Vote early, vote often! (Actually, don’t cheat the vote!) And be sure to have your say in the comments or by visiting The Feed post.
