Jay Glazer and Jason La Canfora are both reporting that both Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin and owner Art Rooney II met Thursday with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell regarding the issue of illegal hits and to get some clarification moving forward on what is legal.
The $40K fine dolled out to safety Ryan Clark for his hit on Ravens tight end Ed Dickson back in week 9 really seemed to catch the ire of Tomlin, as Clark said the following week that Tomlin used it as an example of the proper way to hit and dislodge the ball. Compared to the hit that Heath Miller took this week against the Bengals, the two were very close in nature and yet the hit on Miller was not flagged, nor fined.
I think both those hits were totally legal in my opinion and you really have to like the move by both Tomlin and Rooney here for standing up their players and letting the league know that they are not happy. The Steelers seem to have this as a constant weekly battle and judging by the comments of several players, they still think they are being targeted. It is reported that a few of the Steelers coaches were also in this meeting to get a better clarification of what is an illegal hit versus what is deemed legal by the league.
The Steelers total team fines sit at $182,500 for the season with 10 different players receiving fines.
