Vontaze Burfict has quite a reputation for dirty play and it is one that has cost him quite a bit of money (and NFL availability) over the years. The latest incident involving the Cincinnati Bengals linebacker occurred during a 24-20 loss to the Tennessee Titans on Sunday and Burfict was ejected for making contact with a game official. For good measure, the always controversial defender elected to taunt the fans in Nashville as he left the field and, well, that did not go over particularly well.
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Still, the NFL reportedly did not choose to fine Burfict for his actions.
Kevin Seifert of ESPN shined a bit of light on the situation before the ruling actually came down, indicating that Burfict's fine could not be less than $30,387 as a result of the incident, setting a fairly high baseline.
In some ways, it would be easy to argue that Burfict has earned this kind of fine for his bevy of previous actions but, in looking at the video of this particular incident, it could also be presented that his conduct wasn't "worthy" of a fine north of $30,000. Interpretations will be across the board but, in short, the NFL probably could have saved some headaches by simply handing down the fine to the player almost universally considered to be the dirtiest in the NFL today.
