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Defensive end Austin Booker of the Chicago Bears.
The NFL slapped two Chicago Bears players with three different punishments on Saturday, just ahead of a matchup in San Francisco with the 49ers that has all sorts of implications for the NFC playoff picture.
The league’s Office of Gameday Accountability leveled two fines against second-year defensive end Austin Booker, both of which came because of flagged hits on Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love.
Booker caught a fine of $5,818 for crashing on top of Love, which the NFL deemed as illegal due to Booker’s inability to avert his “body weight” and avoid the maximum possible impact to the Packers QB as they hit the ground. The league fined Booker the exact same amount for a hit to Love’s head late in the second quarter, which resulted in Love exiting the game with a concussion.
Booker spoke about his fines late last week, accepting responsibility for the body weight tackle but asserting that Love was at least partially responsible for the head injury due to ducking just before impact.
“The first one I’ll take full responsibility for. Like, I landed on him, I should have braced myself more,” Booker said. “But I think the second one could definitely go both ways.”
Booker won’t miss any time for the hit, though Love is out for Green Bay’s game against the Baltimore Ravens at Lambeau Field on Saturday night, as he remains in the league’s mandatory concussion protocol.
Bears linebacker D’Marco Jackson, who also is a frequent contributor to Chicago’s special teams unit, incurred a fine of $6,111 for unnecessary roughness by way of a late hit on the game’s opening kickoff.
The author will update this post.
Max Dible covers the NFL, NBA and MLB for Heavy.com, with a focus on the Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings, Chicago Bears and Cleveland Browns. He covered local and statewide news as a reporter for West Hawaii Today and served as news director for BigIslandNow.com and Pacific Media Group’s family of Big Island radio stations before joining Heavy. More about Max Dible
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