Safety Brandon Meriweather of the professional Washington, D.C., football team was flagged for illegal hits twice in a game against the Chicago Bears on Oct. 20. One of those flags was thrown when he left his feet to target receiver Brandon Marshall above the shoulders.
“Guys like that really don’t understand that there is life after football,” Marshall said of Meriweather, according to the Chicago Tribune. “I respect the league trying to better our game and guys like that, maybe he needs to get suspended or taken out of the game completely… I played defense growing up. I was a headhunter.
Even sometimes on the offensive side, I played that way. But with rules in place, you’ve got to respect it.”
Meriweather, whose initial two-game suspension because of the hits on Marshall and teammate Alshon Jeffery was reduced to just one game last Wednesday, responded through Washington media on Monday.
“He feels like I need to be kicked out of the league? I feel like people who beat their girlfriends should be kicked out the league, too,” Meriweather told The Washington Times. “So, you tell me who you’d rather have, somebody who plays aggressive on the field or somebody who beat up their girlfriend?”
Allow me to pretend for a moment that Meriweather’s question was not asked rhetorically. My answer is, I don’t want either guy.
Meriweather is right, Marshall has a less-than-exemplary track record. In 2007, according to the Chicago Tribune, Marshall was arrested near Denver because he was suspected in a domestic violence report. He completed anger management counseling and the charges were dropped.
In June of that year, Marshall was named in two incident reports filed by Atlanta police. His then girlfriend, Rasheedah Watley, told police that Marshall had cut her thigh and punched her in the face. Later in June, Watley told police of more domestic abuse. Marshall’s wife, Michi Nagomi-Marshall, also stabbed him in the stomach in April of 2011. These are concerning incidents.
But since Marshall was traded to Chicago before the 2012 season, there have been no reports of domestic violence. The same can’t be said of the violence for which Meriweather is responsible.
Meriweather has made a career of hurting people, or at the very least attempting to do so. And Marshall certainly got this right: Meriweather doesn’t get it.
“To be honest, man, you’ve just got to go low now,” Meriweather said, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “You’ve got to end people’s careers, you know? You’ve got to tear people’s ACLs and mess up people’s knees now. You can’t hit them high no more.”
He doesn’t seem to understand that there’s plenty of room to hit players above the knees but below the shoulders, and I’d be shocked if he actually made an attempt to become any less of a dirty player. After all, he’s been targeting players’ heads for just about the entirety of his seven-year career.
The difference between Marshall and Meriweather is change. Marshall has apparently sworn off domestic violence—and it’s about time. But Meriweather doesn’t care to make a change.
Even though domestic violence and violence on the football field are not directly comparable, we can compare people’s attempts to move away from the bad things they’ve done in the past.
What Meriweather should have asked is, Would you rather have a guy who’s done bad things in the past and made a concerted effort to end that behavior, or a guy who’s done bad things in the past and just doesn’t seem to care?
That’s not a rhetorical question, and I’ll take Marshall.
Tim Carroll
Senior Sports Editor
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