Just because the season is over for the Bengals doesn’t mean the NFL will keep their grubby hands out of players’ pockets.
The NFL this season has ironically taken on the duty of taking “violent gestures” out of the game.
No, not the violent gestures defenders constantly pull on Joe Burrow after he has gotten rid of the ball. We are talking about celebrations.
The NFL has awarded an appeal to one Cincinnati Bengals player, but they hit another player for one:
Add Cam Taylor-Britt to the list of #Bengals who have successfully won appeals to have fines wiped out.
He was fined $9,019 for a violent gesture but won the appeal case.
Taylor-Britt said he told Josh Newton, who was fined $4,885 this week for a violent gesture, to appeal his.
— Jay Morrison (@ByJayMorrison) January 5, 2025
Sometimes, it is hard to even catch the celebrations that constitute these fines. Other times it’s as obvious as George Pickens firing a finger gun at the crowd, signaling first down.
One popular form of this — and seemingly the most popular — are players pretending to pull their shirt up, similar to when people flash they have a gun in their waistband.
You may remember that is what got wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase fined for that very celebration earlier in the season. Andrei Iosivas also won an appeal for pretending to fire a bow and arrow after scoring a touchdown against the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 2.
The NFL has been ticky-tacky with this fine all season. It is hard to say what Newton and Taylor-Britt were actually hit with a fine for doing, but it is easy to say that it is so dumb the NFL is drawing this line in the sand, given the history of the sport.
Even without that, the NFL knows how much people love celebrations. One of the most universally loved decisions was when they finally lifted many of the restrictions on celebrations. They have slowly been pulling that back with taunting and now these fines.
Maybe when they are reviewing all the tape to find these, they can take a second to track how poor some crews of refs have been these past years and get some replacements rolling. Then we won’t have to worry about someone twisting Burrow’s helmet around like he has an owl’s knock or getting hit in the ribs three seconds after getting rid of the ball. Maybe those are violent gestures the NFL should work to get out of the game.
