When the NFL announced the three-game suspension of Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair, the league generally referred to his “multiple violations for personal fouls and sportsmanship violations in recent seasons.”
With persistent criticism of an appeals process that lacked transparency – and tainted by an apparent conflict of interest – the full history of Al-Shaair’s transgressions on the field comes to light unofficially.
PFT obtained the full list. There are thirteen, dating from 2020. Only seven of them have resulted in fines.
Three have happened this year. First, Al-Shair had a side battle in Week 2 against the Bears. He was fined $11,817, and it was not appealed. Second, he hit Titans running back Tony Pollard out of bounds in Week 12. The $11,255 fine is pending. Another happened during the Jaguars game on Sunday. Al-Shaair was cited for unsportsmanlike conduct, but was not fined. (At least not yet.)
During the 2023 season, Al-Shaair was fined $13,934 for a blow to the head/neck of a quarterback. He was also fined $10,927 for a face mask error.
During the 2022 season, Al-Shaair was fined $11,139 for fighting. (It was reduced to $8,911 on appeal.)
During the 2021 season, Al-Shaair was punished, without an actual fine, for four cases of illegal use of the helmet. On one occasion he was fined $41,200 for using a helmet. (This was confirmed on appeal.)
During the 2020 season, Al-Shaair was penalized once for wearing a helmet, without a fine. On another occasion that year, he was fined $4,000 for using a helmet. (The fine was reduced to $3,200 on appeal.)
As for the seven cases in which Al-Shaair was punished for wearing a helmet, he was only fined twice. The lack of fines indicates a broader effort by the league during that period to aggressively enforce the rule against lowering the helmet and making violent contact with an opponent. Common sense suggests that if Al-Shaair was the only one doing this, he would have been fined more than two times out of seven.
Common sense also suggests that the league is reeling a bit from the backlash to Al-Shaair’s suspension, both from the Texans and elsewhere. But it’s deserved. Instead of simply focusing on the blatantly illegal attack on Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence, the league has tried to portray Al-Shaair as a villain.
Why not just suspend him for the punch, without any PR efforts aimed at making him look worse? The hit speaks for itself. Late slide or not, Al-Shaair came in hot with a forearm to the head of Lawrence. Al-Shair could have tried to avoid Lawrence. Instead, Al-Shaair embraced the chance to make a Bednarik-style hit.
That should be enough for the suspension. The rest is just noise. And now there’s more noise, in the form of a history of discipline that looks much worse on the surface than it probably is — especially if the 2021 discipline (without fines) points to a broader philosophical issue about when and how players should are punished. for hits that are inherent to playing football.
