The NFL’s disciplinary process for players often seems to lack rhyme or reason. This week the league gave one-game suspensions to both Rob Gronkowski and JuJu Smith-Schuster, even though Gronkowski’s hit on Tre’Davious White was after the whistle and arguably deserved a harsher punishment.
Steelers’ Mike Mitchell calls out fellow NFL players for surrendering so much disciplinary power to league
If players want anything to change, they’re going to have to be willing to strike for it when the next agreement is negotiated.
Jeanna Kelley has been covering the Falcons for The Falcoholic since 2011 and the NFL for SB Nation since 2015.
Steelers safety Mike Mitchell puts the blame for this squarely on his peers in the NFL who voted to approve the current CBA.
“We’ve got to do better as players when we sign the next CBA,” Mitchell said. “We’ve got to get better leadership as who’s running the league.”
Mitchell said the CBA his peers voted to approve in 2011 gives Roger Goodell and the league too much unchecked power over fines and suspensions.
Mitchell questioned, as many did, why the NFL would give one-game suspensions to both Gronkowski and Smith-Schuster.
Gronkowski dropped an elbow to the back of Tre’Davious White’s head as White was lying on the ground after the whistle in Sunday’s Patriots-Bills matchup. Smith-Schuster put a block with some helmet-to-helmet contact on Bengals linebacker Vontaze Burfict. Smith-Schuster was also flagged for standing over Burfict and taunting him after the play.
Both White and Burfict were concussed. Each had to be carted off the field. And Gronkowski and Smith-Schuster both deserved to face consequences for breaking the league’s rules on contact with defenseless players.
But there’s one important distinction here: Gronkowski’s cheap shot on White was after the whistle. Smith-Schuster’s block on Burfict happened during a play. And the NFL said Wednesday that it did not consider his post-play taunting of Burfict as a factor in his discipline, according to the AP’s Will Graves.
The current CBA gives the league power to hand these two players the exact same sentence just because they feel like it. And almost every team in the league voted to approve it.
Retired safety Ryan Clark, who played with Mitchell in Pittsburgh from 2009 through 2013, offered an important reminder:
That’s right. The Steelers were the only team in the NFL that voted against ratifying the current CBA back in 2011.
Former Steelers backup quarterback Charlie Batch told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2015 that players voted against the CBA because they were concerned about the scope of the personal conduct policy.
“That’s what we would always say, the players on that Steelers team who voted ‘no’ were players who could talk about the CBA without being hypocritical,” Batch said.
The Steelers’ current NFLPA rep, left guard Ramon Foster, said that if players want to see changes in Goodell’s power over player discipline, they’re going to have to be willing to sacrifice for it with a players strike.
“You hit them in the pocket,” Foster said in August, via Penn Live’s Jacob Klinger. “You hit them in the pocket and in that way money always talks.”
As it stands now, the NFL has sweeping authority to issue discipline for anything Goodell decides is “conduct detrimental to the league.”
If players want that to change with the next CBA, they’re going to have to prepare to miss some games.
See More:
