One of the more surreal moments of yesterday’s 15-10 Minnesota Vikings victory over the Miami Dolphins involved a play that, technically, didn’t even count.
With about five and a half minutes left in the first quarter, a third-down play for the Dolphins died due to a neutral zone infraction on Dallas Turner. Before the action could stop, Dolphins running back Ollie Gordon shoved Vikings linebacker Eric Wilson into referee Adrian Hill. Wilson appeared to be trying to go and help Hill up off the ground, but Hill stood up and immediately started yelling in Wilson’s face as if he thought Wilson was trying to knock him down.
To Wilson’s credit, he appears to have remained calm and walked away without escalating things.
It seemed pretty obvious to almost everyone that Wilson had no intention of knocking Hill out and that he was, in fact, pushed by Gordon. Hill, apparently, wasn’t interested in such details and decided he wanted to yell at Wilson instead.
The league was not impressed with Hill’s reaction and decided to suspend him for a week because of this. The league also suspended a line judge from the Arizona Cardinals/New York Giants game for two games for a confrontation he had with Cardinals tight end Trey McBride that you’ve probably seen on the internet at some point by now.
Everyone knows that contacting referees is wrong, but this is indicative on purpose communication with officials. In this case, Wilson clearly had no intention of anything harmful, and Hill’s reaction to what happened was completely out of line. The suspension was fully deserved and, hopefully, Hill will think twice before the next time he decides to get up in front of a player who did nothing wrong in the first place.