It looks like Raiders wide receiver Amari Cooper will get what he wanted after having his helmet removed and his head slammed into it by Bengals cornerback Adam Jones during Cincinnati’s 33-13 victory on Sunday.
PFT has learned, via a league source, that Jones will be fined for his actions but that he will avoid a suspension just as he avoided being ejected by the officiating crew working the game in Oakland. Those officials flagged Jones for uneccesary roughness instead.
Cooper said after the game that he thought the officials would have handed down a “harsher penalty” if they had a better view of what Jones did, but said he didn’t think Jones should be suspended because they were “just playing physical.”
Over the summer, the league sent a memo to every team reminding them of the prohibitions against fighting and vowing that actions that break those rules will not be tolerated. It will likely be hard for many people to reconcile that stance with one that treats Jones’s act as not being worthy of discipline beyond a fine.