Add Cleveland Browns S Grant Delpit to the growing list of people who have come out in defense of Minkah Fitzpatrick’s hit on Nick Chubb during Monday Night Football. Fitzpatrick’s hit caused Chubb to suffer a “significant knee injury” that will sideline him for the remainder of the 2023 season, but Delpit doesn’t think Fitzpatrick did anything wrong.
“It’s football, man. I can’t say what I would’ve did in that moment, I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm to Nick or anything like that. It was just a crazy football play, to be honest. Plays can go 1,000 ways every play, you never know. It’s just tough playing this sport sometimes,” Delpit said via Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com.
It’s an unfortunate play that unfortunately ended Chubb’s season, but Fitzpatrick did nothing wrong. It’s good to see Browns players coming out and defending him, because like Delpit said, it was just a football play.
Chubb is a big, physical back, and one of the hardest guys in the league to bring down. It usually takes multiple guys to bring him down, so just because LB Cole Holcomb had him wrapped around the chest, it sure wasn’t a guarantee that Chubb was going down. Fitzpatrick went low, which defenders are taught to do today instead of going high near the head, and he said there’s nothing he would do differently while coming to his own defense.
All that’s in Fitzpatrick’s mind is making the play and preventing Chubb from getting to the goal line from inside the five, so he came downhill and made a tackle he’s probably made hundreds of thousands of times throughout his playing career.
Football is a dangerous sport, and freak injuries can occur. Fitzpatrick didn’t go into that hit thinking he was going to injure Chubb, and Chubb didn’t go into that run and keep churning his legs thinking his knee could give out. It was just a freak play, a freak injury.
You hate to see significant injuries like the one Chubb suffered on Monday Night, and hopefully, he can get back to full strength with a speedy recovery. Insinuating that Fitzpatrick had the wrong intentions is ludicrous, and it’s good to see some of Chubb’s teammates try to end that chatter.
As a safety himself, Delpit might have made the same play, and he said as much. Football is a game of seconds and a game of inches, and Fitzpatrick did what he’s been taught to do to bring down a physical runner near the end zone.
Hopefully, with Delpit coming to Fitzpatrick’s defense, we can end all the nonsense about the play being dirty.
