Now that we know Willis McGahee’s brain is still in one piece, we can shift our focus to Ryan Clark, the Steelers safety who leveled the running back, causing whiplash typically reserved for test dummies. Clark, who was slow to get up himself after the hit, wasn’t penalized on the play, although the replay shows definitively that it was a helmet-to-helmet blow:↵
McGahee’s OK, Now What to Do With Clark ...
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↵↵It appears as if Clark attempted to lead with his shoulder, but his helmet made contact with McGahee’s before any other part of his body. CBS analyst Phil Simms seemed to believe it was a perfectly clean hit because, as he said, “there’s no such thing as helmet-to-helmet when you have a ball-carrier down the field and you’re a tackler.” Um, what? So the helmet-to-helmet rule only applies to hits occurring on players who aren’t running with the football? Interesting.↵
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↵Elsewhere, Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio, a noted Steeler hater, wrote that Clark should be “suspended for the Super Bowl. Period.” Deadspin’s Dashiell Bennett called it a “clean” hit, and goes on to blame poor tackling technique for the injuries. I don’t know, it got the runner to the ground and caused a fumble; hard to argue with a hit that accomplishes both of those.↵
↵↵As for me, I’ll say this: it was a vicious helmet-to-helmet hit, but seemed unintentional -- Clark tried to turn his body and hit with the shoulder. Having said that, Clark also has a history of unnecessary roughness this season (see: Welkah, Wes getting de-cleated on an uncatchable pass). A fine for the hit may be in order, but suspending Clark from the Super Bowl seems a bit much. Then again, removing Clark from the game might, ever so slightly, help even the playing field a bit. I’m down for doing whatever it takes to give us a closely contested Super Bowl. ↵
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