BEREA, Ohio (AP) - Browns wide receiver Jarvis Landry called the NFL for two penalties - false start and illegal procedure in its handling of Myles Garrett’s suspension.
“It was not fair to Myles,” Landry said.
Garrett was banned indefinitely by the league for striking Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph over the head with a helmet last week, the shocking act disrupting Cleveland’s season and intensifying an already heated rivalry with Pittsburgh.
Garrett had asked for a reduction of his unprecedented penalty - the longest for a single on-field act in league history. He was denied Thursday by appeals officer James Thrash, whose ruling came out shortly after a report surfaced that the Pro Bowl defensive end told the league Rudolph used a racial slur.
Garrett later stood by his claim, saying on Twitter: “I know what I heard.”
Thrash did reduce Steelers center Maurkice Pouncey’s suspension from three games to two for kicking and punching Garrett. One day earlier, Thrash upheld a one-game suspension for Brown defensive tackle Larry Ogunjobi, who pushed a helmet-less Rudolph to the ground in the melee.
On Friday, Landry and some other Browns players were trying to make sense of the discipline, saying it hurried and one-sided. They also want to know why Rudolph escaped punishment.
“I still do feel like the league handled the process too quickly, made a decision too quickly,” Landry said. “With less than 24 hours, they made a decision. With the appeal process, you have a guy kicking and punching Myles, and he gets suspended, he gets a game taken off of his suspension? Then you have Larry who did way less than that. He still gets suspended for his game. So it makes no sense.
“Then you have a guy who’s involved and pretty much instigated the whole thing, and nothing happens to him. It’s almost like deliberately trying to like mess with Cleveland.”
Landry’s main complaint with the league is that its initial ruling came less than 12 hours after Garrett pulled off Rudolph’s helmet before swinging it and hitting the QB on top of the head.
Landry didn’t condone his teammate’s behavior, but he believes the league should have done a more thorough investigation.
“It’s about, I guess, protecting the shield and protecting the brand and all of that,” he said. “I just think that it was something that no one has seen as far as the use of a helmet, but fights and all of this stuff, they occur all the time in NFL games. I think just being prime time, national stage, the way that they responded with the suspension within 12 hours, it was just all video evidence.
Nobody really had an opportunity to make a case of to say anything. The suspension was already done.”
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