Ndamukong Suh isn’t sorry for what he did to Matt Schaub.
“I was dragged to the ground,” Suh said Wednesday. “A lot of things happen to me.
“It’s part of the game.”
The NFL fined the Detroit Lions defensive tackle $30,000 for unnecessary roughness because he kicked the Houston Texans quarterback, but the league didn’t suspend him because it couldn’t reach a judgment on his intent.
Suh was on his chest after being taken down by an offensive lineman when he extended his left cleat and hit Schaub below the belt in Detroit’s loss to Houston last Thursday.
For the first time Wednesday, Suh tried to explain what happened.
“It’s a crazy play, it’s one that unfortunately happened,” he said. “I didn’t even realize it until the end of the game, when I see my Twitter feed, I see my friends telling me about it. Other than that, I can’t do much more about it. I was being dragged to the ground and my foot inadvertently hit the man.
“But it’s over with and I am moving forward and getting ready to play the Colts.”
Detroit (4-7) will have Suh on the field when it hosts Indianapolis (7-4) because he dodged another suspension from the league. His reputation, though, has taken another hit.
The NFL suspended Suh for two games last season after he stomped on Green Bay’s Evan Dietrich-Smith in a nationally televised game on Thanksgiving Day. Suh said he was sorry to Dietrich-Smith personally for stomping on his right arm.
“I think I’m always going to be punished some form or fashion for last Thanksgiving,” Suh said. “I apologized for it and I will continue to apologize for it. It’s something that happened, a mistake that I made, I’m living up to it and I’ll continue to move past it. Some people may not, some people will and some people will teeter-totter back and forth depending on whatever the situation is.”
Suh has been fined in previous seasons for roughing up QBs: Cincinnati’s Andy Dalton, Chicago’s Jay Cutler and Cleveland’s Jake Delhomme.
Schaub refused to talk about the play, or Suh, after last week’s game and declined to say much about it or him again after Wednesday’s practice.
Cutler did choose to chime in on the 6-foot-4, 307-pound Suh, who has ferociously knocked him down multiple times and once finished off a tackle by twisting and ripping his helmet off.
“It seems like he’s always in this predicament every five, six, seven games,” Cutler said. “You have to be aware of him when he’s playing football. He’s a tough competitor. He plays hard.
“Sometimes, he goes overboard.”
Delhomme agreed.
In a preseason game two years ago, Suh grabbed Delhomme’s face mask, twisted it, wrapped his arms around his helmet and slammed him to the ground.
“What he did to me as a rookie and how he hit Cutler hard earlier this year were just aggressive plays,” Delhomme told The Associated Press in a telephone interview, adding that he’s likely going to stay retired in Louisiana. “But there’s no place in the game for kicking Schaubie like he did or stomping that guy last year on Thanksgiving.”
