All this week, we’ve seen comments being left on blogs and message boards that indicate that the hit laid on Jared Allen by Gosder Cherilus (and subsequent knee injury) was karma for Allen’s earlier season hits on Matt Schaub and Aaron Rodgers.  All kinds of “fans” claim that Allen is a dirty player.

Now even ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio is getting in on the act, saying “We’ll wait a second while you wipe the Coke off your screen” after reporting that Allen declared that he has “never, ever taken a cheap shot at anybody.”

Florio’s proof that Allen has taken cheap shots?  The $75,000 in fines levied against him this season by the NFL for the hits on Schaub and Rodgers, and a (slightly biased) YouTube video replaying the hit on Schaub.

The random comments on the blogs don’t surprise me, nor really irritate me much, since it’s typically anonymous fans of other teams running their mouths.  But I would hope that someone like Florio would be able to provide a little better evidence (he is a lawyer, after all), and be a little non-partial, since he claims to hate all 32 teams equally.

The fact that the NFL fined Allen, in my eyes, means nothing–as we’ve discussed repeated here, the NFL has gone fine crazy this year, and as of this week is now fining players for basic penalties that never happened.

As for the YouTube video, I’ll repost it below.  Now, I’m not going to say that the hit isn’t late, and that it definitely ISN’T a cheap shot.  But there’s enough circumstantial evidence in the video to say that Allen may not have really intended to hit Schaub in the knee.

You can clearly see in the video that Allen stumbles as he is persuing Schaub.  He is not blocked down, but also clearly slipped, and was close to the ground as he pursued Schaub.  In fact, it appears that he is slipping again as he hits Schaub.

I would also surmise that it’s possible that Allen didn’t know the ball was gone–funny thing, those football helmets and pads, they tend to restrict some of the movement of the head, and restrict the field of vision–especially for linemen.

Finally, the most damning piece of evidence against the claim that this hit was a cheap shot, comes not from Allen or Schaub, but Vikings DT Kevin Williams (#93), who appears to give Schaub a shove at the end of the play–pushing Schaub into Allen.

So, is it clear that Allen didn’t take a cheap shot on Schaub?  No, no more clear than it is that he DID take a cheap shot. And I would think a lawyer would be willing and able to point that out.

Personally, after hearing Allen on the radio a couple times in the last week, I’ve actually grown to respect him–in the day of the sports cliche interviews, or the even worse “Me, me, me me me” attitudes, Allen seems like a refreshingly honest guy who is willing to speak his mind and have a little fun (as evidenced by the mullet, and the clothing gear available at his JaredAllen69inc.com Web site.