San Francisco 49ers linebacker Ahmad Brooks was fined $15,570 by the NFL on Wednesday for a hit on Now Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees on Sunday. The Saints won the game 23-20.
Brooks hit Brees in the neck and leveled him during the fourth quarter of Sunday’s game. The hit forced a fumble, but the Saints kept possession due to the penalty. There was blood on Brees’s chin after the hit, according to the Associated Press. Brooks argued that the hit did merit a penalty.
"I didn't hit him with my hand or my helmet," Brooks said, according to The Sports Xchange. "I basically bear-hugged him. That's just how football is played. I think this ---- is bull----. Football, the way they call stuff these days, it's watered down. It ain't real no more."
The NFL is defending the call, saying that the penalty was necessary.
"You can't make forcible contact to the head or the neck area, even if the contact starts below the neck and rises up," Dean Blandino, the NFL‘s vice president of officiating said. "If there's force to that contact, it's a foul. Watch the initial contact, maybe around the shoulder, but it rides up into the neck area and brings the quarterback down with force. That's why the flag was thrown for unnecessary roughness."
Brees said that he didn’t think that Brooks was trying to hurt him. This isn’t the first time that Brooks has been fined this season. He was fined $12,750 for a roughing the passer call against Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers in the season opener.