One thing the sports media has gotten right this week has been identifying the biggest news from the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Monday night win over the Cleveland Browns—of course, they get the focus wrong. The big story is the season-ending knee injury to Browns RB Nick Chubb.
The fact that S Minkah Fitzpatrick hit him low is nothing more than a footnote, but it’s become the focal point. Subsequently, everybody has felt compelled to share their opinions, with many arguing that it was a dirty hit. That’s not how former Steelers DL Chris Hoke feels—with a caveat.
“I didn’t like it”, he told Ron Cook and Joe Starkey on 93.7 The Fan when asked for his opinion about Fitzpatrick’s hit on Chubb. “As he was coming, Cole [Holcomb] had him, he was hanging on, and Minkah comes in and doesn’t hit him straight up. Doesn’t hit him with his shoulder in his legs. He turns and gets on all fours and he kind of rolls into him. I just didn’t like it. I don’t understand why he went at him like that”.
“It wasn’t even like a tackle. It was more like a stop, drop, and roll. It wasn’t a football play, in my opinion, a football tackle”, he added.
Cook and Starkey took Hoke’s comments to mean that he didn’t like that Fitzpatrick went at his knees as though it was done with the intent to injure. What he really meant was he just thought it was a bad play and one that should be avoided.
Asked if he thought that going low in that situation was the best way for him to take Chubb down, Hoke said, “Obviously it had to have been”. He refuted any notion that there was any intent to injure on the safety’s part.
“That’s not Minkah, number one”, he elaborated. “Number two, I think it was bad technique. I think it was just a bad football play on his part, and he felt like that was the way to get him down”.
Hoke did say that it was sort of an unspoken rule that you don’t stand the ball carrier up, but Fitzpatrick told reporters that at the time he made the split-second decision to try to bring Chubb down by going low, he didn’t know that Holcomb was coming in to tackle him high.
Perhaps had he had the time to see and process that, he might have taken a different attack angle, but in the moment, he felt he was in a one-on-one situation. I can’t imagine anybody thinking rationally would argue that the play ended the way Fitzpatrick was hoping it would when he launched his body.
The good news is that, at least in terms of the media cycle surrounding it, this will be water under the bridge soon enough, and we can all move on. At least, until it all gets dredged up again the next time the Steelers play the Browns.
I haven’t done exhaustive research, but to the best of my knowledge, I haven’t seen any active player in the NFL calling Fitzpatrick out for his hit. Even Chubb’s teammate, S Grant Delpit, refuted any notion that it was a dirty play, and Browns players do have a history of running their mouths, so I’m inclined to believe that’s how he genuinely feels about it.
