BALTIMORE – Ravens linebacker Roquan Smith was fined for an alleged hip-drop tackle on Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Chris Godwin on Monday night, a source with direct knowledge confirmed to The Baltimore Sun on Friday. The play resulted in a grisly and likely season-ending ankle injury for the Pro Bowl receiver. Smith has up to three days to appeal the $16,833 fine after receiving a notification from the NFL. Once that happens, a hearing is scheduled and the case is assigned to one of the league’s current appeals officers: Derrick Brooks, Ramon Foster, Kevin Mawae or Jordy Nelson, each of whom were jointly appointed and paid by the NFL and the NFL Players Association. Ravens coach John Harbaugh was noncommittal about whether he thought it was a hip-drop tackle.
“You could parse all that,” he said Friday. “It becomes really fine. It’s fine-tuning to determine those things. I’m sure there will be continued conversation on that.
“As far as Ro goes, Ro’s fighting to go make a tackle there, we’re trying to get off the field, we’re trying to get out of the game with a victory. He would never do anything to hurt anyone and he would never do anything that’s outside the rules. … He tries to do it according to the rules, as all our guys do.” In March, teams unanimously voted to ban the hip-drop tackle, which is when a defender wraps up a ball carrier, swivels his hips, unweights himself and drops onto the ball carrier’s legs. Though no player has been flagged for the penalty this season, Smith is at least the eighth player to have been hit with a fine. The Washington Post reported at last week’s fall owners’ meeting that 22 plays had been reviewed for a hip-drop tackle this season.
You never wanna see anybody go down with any type of injury, but we play a very physical game and it demands a lot,” Smith said Thursday. “Bullets are playing pretty fast, but I never go into any game meaning to injure any player.” Godwin, who suffered a dislocated ankle on Smith’s tackle in the final minute of Baltimore’s 41-31 victory at Raymond James Stadium, underwent surgery Thursday. “It’s tough to put into words the range of emotions over the last few days,” Godwin said in an Instagram post Friday morning, his first comments since the injury. “We don’t always get to know ‘why,’ but that rarely matters anyway. Adversity reveals our true character and I look forward to the opportunity to display mine throughout this process.”
After the game, Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles defended his decision of keeping Godwin in when Tampa Bay had little chance of winning by then. “He’s a player. We’re trying to win the ballgame. We were still down 10, we’re trying to get extra points and kick another onside kick,” Bowles said. “It just happened. With Mike [Evans] going down, we didn’t have that many receivers left as it was, so we play what we got.” Smith was previously fined this season for unnecessary roughness after a horse collar tackle on Kansas City Chiefs running back Isiah Pacheco, though he won his appeal
The Ravens are also familiar with the hip-drop tackle after they lost tight end Mark Andrews for the final six games and a divisional round playoff game last season after his ankle was injured while being dragged down by Cincinnati Bengals linebacker Logan Wilson last November. “I don’t wanna say it’s part of the game, but I don’t think Roquan had any malicious intent with it,” Ravens safety Kyle Hamilton said Thursday. “I think he’s just really trying to tackle him. “I thought he grabbed him and kind of dove at him. I don’t think he hip-dropped him or anything like that. Unfortunately, his leg got stuck under Roquan’s.”
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