Closer examination of the Al-Shaair incident

I was going to post this as a reply elsewhere, but it got big and I had to go to work, so fuggit I'll just make it a post here.

I rewatched the film, and the hit on Lawrence, quite a few times to determine for myself what to believe. When watching it in game it was a brutal hit and I thought that Lawrence slid a tad on the late side but that Al-Shaair could have tried to avoid contact at least a little. Interestingly I think as I watched the film I felt more on "Team Azeez", though I still think this is a penalty. As a side note, when this was half written I then saw the Joe Thomas and Tom Brady statements, which seem somewhat in line with that I've noted below.

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Here are some facts about the incident that all of us can see with our eyes. If any of this seems like Texans homer propaganda etc, please, go watch the film and tell me where I'm wrong.

• Lawrence was running full speed directly at Al-Shaair, not to the side or away from him etc.
• The slide began with 3.5-4 yards between them, not 5 or beyond like some people are claiming.
  • "The slide began" means he left his upright running posture and began the shift in momentum, not that he had slid. Essentially I'm saying that any visual evidence that Lawrence was giving himself up happened 3.5-4 yards away from running directly into Al-Shaair
  • From the point that Lawrence began changing his momentum to initiate the slide, to the point where Al-Shaair rolled off of him, the full act of the contact… took ONE SECOND according to the game clock. This play happened really fast.
• The slide started a few yards away from contact, but his body didn't actually connect with the ground until he was just ONE YARD away from Al-Shaair.
• Lawrence's knee hit the ground at almost the exact same instant that Al-Shaair's forward lunge began.
  • And it was about a quarter of a second between a change in Lawrence's posture/momentum to when Al-Shaair lunged into a 'point of no return'.
• Al-Shaair led with his arms out in front of his body and did not initiate contact with his helmet, shoulder, or forearm, as has been said so often. His left fist hit Lawrence in his left shoulder. Because Lawrence was sliding under and Al-Shaair was going over, Al-Shaair's forearm then flattened into Lawrence's collar and slides up to the facemask, ultimately coming to rest on his helmet as Lawrence hit the ground and Al-Shaair rolled off of him. As the contact developed, Al-Shaair's two arms, initially bent at 90 degrees forming a sort of double punch, compressed into his own body and his facemask came up behind them where it then hit Lawrence's turned helmet. This popped Lawrence's head into the ground just inches below, creating whiplash/concussion.
• Al-Shaair did not 'pull up' on the contact. This is a penalty.
• Al-Shaair did not see Lawrence after the hit. It's likely he did not even realize Lawrence was hurt until the cart came out minutes later. As he gets up off the ground he sees a penalty flag and does the classic "Are You Kidding Me, A Penalty On That Obvious Thing I Did?!" arms thing that players do when they get called for the most obvious penalties, and as that was happening he was hit from behind by the Jags player. As he got up from that, the Jags bench had cleared out and he was surrounded. He was not surrounded by nuns, he was surrounded by people who were furious at him. This was an attack, he fought back, still never once having seen Lawrence on the turf. This lasted quite a while, at least a couple minutes.

Here are my beliefs. Feel free to disagree with these as a matter of opinion, though I think the above facts having video evidence strengthen these opinions:

• The narrative that Trevor slid 'early enough' is misguided. Not making contact with the ground until 1 yard away from a defender is a late slide. This is not victim blaming, this is the recognition that from a player safety standpoint, a QB cannot both "Try to get to the first down despite a defender being at the line" and "Definitely not get hurt". You either need to commit for the yards and lower the shoulder and try to punch through, or you need to get down and avoid contact. Trever 100% tried to do both. He was flying upfield, even changing direction to run straight at Al-Shaair before contact, which looks a lot like trying to get that first down.
• Al-Shaair did not lead contact with his helmet, shoulder pads, or forearm, and so he did not break the rules for a specific type of contact. To me, this ends any discussion of whether he is a malicious player etc.
• You can look at this play in real game speed, which makes it appear extremely brutal because football is fast, and two humans running at each other is brutal. Or you can slow it down to see exactly what happened, which also leads to a spectator belief that there is more time for a player to process things and do specific things with their body. You cannot have it both ways and be reasonable.
• The hit was 100% a penalty because he did not pull up or make some clear effort to try and mitigate the hit.
  • The ejection was warranted because of this as well, in my opinion.
  • That said, the hit was not nearly as dirty as it looked in real time. If neither player was wearing a helmet, Lawrence would have taken a forearm to the collarbone and literally nothing else. But the helmets colliding together after the contact developed bounced his head into the turf which was only a few inches below it.
    • This point is to highlight the difference of some hits where a defender puts the shoulder into a helmet, or spears them with their own helmet. When deciding if a player is dirty, or dangerous, or ignoring safety, these types of differences are actually really important to consider.
• From the perspective of Al-Shaair, he made a big hit and half the Jags roster started coming after him screaming and hitting and pulling. He fought back. From that perspective it's at least within the realm of reason that as the situation unfolded he was not being some unapologetic brute who wanted to kill Lawrence and any other player who got close to him, but he was enraged by getting jumped by dozens of men. There was no context for him that he had injured Lawrence, only that he had hit the QB in a slide, which he somehow didn't think was illegal.
  • This is exceptionally close to the Bears game where he (cleanly) hit Caleb Williams before he was out of bounds, but it was close, and the Bears players surrounded him and went aggro. This infamously led to him swinging at a player who actually wasn't attacking him at all.

My personal conclusion here is this:

1. The hit itself was not "dirty" in that he was seeking to hurt Lawrence or using his body in a dangerous manner (leading with the helmet, targeting the head etc.).
2. The hit was clearly illegal in the current iteration of the rules, as you cannot tackle a sliding player. This is to prevent injuries such as the one that occurred here. Much discussion can be had about QB slide protection, I won't get into that here.
3. There is a narrative that Al-Shaair was unapologetic, violent, bad etc. because of his behavior after the hit. He didn't realize what had happened in the wake of the hit, all he knew was that he was suddenly being attacked by dozens of people. Should he have theoretically just let them beat the s**t out of him and controlled his own actions? Yes. But does it make sense to me that a man who got attacked for 2 straight minutes or more had extremely elevated hostile emotions as he was removed from the game? Yes it does make sense. He can be mad at getting jumped, without that meaning he clearly wasn't sorry that Lawrence got hurt.
4. Al-Shaair's lack of awareness that what he did was a penalty (as evidenced by his initial reaction to the flag) is insanely troubling. To me, that lack of awareness is what lead into participating in the brawl as well. Just reactionary aggression and anger. Like if I was driving, ran a red light, and tboned another car and everyone around the crash rushed over and dragged me out of the car and beat the s**t out of me, I would try to mitigate the incoming damage but I would realize that I fucked up and I could understand in that moment why they were trying to hurt me, even if I didn't realize I had just killed the other driver.

Just my thoughts based on what I can see. If you read the facts list and you think "This guys just a Texans homer" etc. then maybe you should go more closely examine what happened. If I'm wrong let me know. If you think my opinions are wrong, feel free to share why and if yours are based on solid reasoning I'm open to changing my mind. Biggest surprise to me was that I initially thought there was more space between the two of them, but in reality there was not. The space only existed before the slide started.

Feel free to share or use my findings etc. there definitely a lot of misinformation going on out there being ran with by people who clearly have not gone back to watch the play.