Former Cincinnati Bengals LB Vontaze Burfict crept back into the headlines on Friday with a peculiar statement while streaming Madden. He said that he didn’t play dirty, but admitted that he reserved that play for the Steelers. Le’Veon Bell saw those headlines, and had a response saying, “lol that’s cap.. he played dirty against errrrryyyyybody.”
Bell was at his peak in the NFL when Burfict became public enemy number one in Pittsburgh. Burfict was involved in a tackle that tore Bell’s MCL during a promising 2015 season. Bell earned his first All-Pro selection in 2014 and was well on his way to another fantastic season before his injury. Bell had almost 700 all-purpose yards in six games that season prior to the injury.
That was not the only time Burfict drew the ire of Steelers fans as he was also involved in a massive hit to Antonio Brown as a defenseless receiver across the middle of the field in the AFC Wild Card game later that same season. That was part of a wild sequence of events that saw the Bengals snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in what would have been their first playoff win in a very long time.
This is not the first time that Bell and Burfict have had internet beef with each other as Bell tried challenging Burfict to a boxing match in May of 2023, claiming Burfict had “purposely” injured him.
The injury that Bell sustained looked more like happenstance than a purposeful injury as Bell’s leg got caught up in a hip-drop tackle, but Burfict’s track record of dirty play is not up for debate. He was fined three separate times in the 2015 season for hits made on the Steelers alone. He was also ejected in 2019 for a vicious helmet-to-helmet hit against a receiver that was already on the ground. Those fines that he received were in an era where fines were just starting to be more frequent. In today’s NFL fines are thrown around for relatively minor infractions, so Burfict’s fines in that era were from blatant wrongdoings.
