USA TODAY Sports
When the dust settled on the brouhaha sparked by the second illegal hit by Bengals gunner Mike Thomas on Dolphins punt returner Jakeem Grant, multiple players were ejected. Thomas wasn’t.
Per a source with knowledge of the situation, the powers-that-be decided that the behavior from Thomas didn’t rise to the level of an ejection. While Thomas clearly hit Grant early on the second punt return, the second hit did not involve, even remotely or closely, contact with the helmet of Thomas or to the head/neck area of Grant.
That factor helped skew the judgment call toward allowing Thomas to continue.
On Monday, Bengals special-teams coordinator Darrin Simmons defended Thomas, expressing a belief that there was no helmet contact on either of the two hits.
“A hit to a defenseless punt returner, there’s some type of helmet-to-helmet contact or there’s a hit to the head of the punt returner, which there was not in this case,” Simmons said. “Mike hit him with his shoulder in the chest of his returner. It’s a bang-bang play. The returner had full opportunity to catch the ball. The ball actually went through his hands and hit the ground about the same time Mike made contact. So he had ample opportunity to catch it. Mike made a clean hit. I disagree with the call that was made on the first one.”
The source agrees that careful review of the first hit suggests that no foul was committed. Thomas hit Grant after the ball arrives, and Thomas managed to get his helmet to Grant’s side. (That said, there seemed to be some incident contact with Grant’s facemask.)
This doesn’t mean Thomas will get off scot-free. He’ll surely be fined for the second incident, a hit that came early and interference with Grant’s opportunity to make the fair catch. Whether he is fined for the first incident will shed more light on whether the league believes the first incident amounted to a foul.
