This may well be the funniest thing I’ve read in a while. A wide receiver (!) is the dirtiest player in football?
See, I know what this is all about. These guys in the NFL are upset because the little boy they used to pick on in high school, this six-foot, 200-pound ex-quarterback, hits with reckless abandon. Wide receivers aren’t supposed to hit like that, they’re just targets to tee off on across the middle. But Hines Ward dishes it out, and these Nancy boys can’t handle the fact that they’re getting blasted by a little guy who isn’t afraid of them anymore.
It’s a man’s game, bitches. Suck it up or find another job, and try to make it one that doesn’t get you shown up repeatedly by the smallest guy on the field. I think Ward said it best:
Awaits the predictable Steelers hate and links to the perfectly legal Rivers hit…
Most of the top twenty are pretty predictable, there are always some surprises from the o-linemen, but Troy Polamalu? I know I’m biased toward the Steelers but I can at least see where they’re coming from on Ward. Polamalu flabbergasts me though, I remember seeing a dirty, or at least questionable, hit from him when he was at USC but I don’t recall much during the pros.
Since the poll was taken from NFL players themselves, I can only assume that they know what they’re talking about. I seriously doubt it has anything to do with high school.
Hines Ward does get fined all the time for cheap shots down field, and he did break that dude’s jaw.
It doesn’t stand to reason that an NFL player would dislike another because they’re tough and hit hard. I’ve never heard of that. I doubt he got voted Dirtiest Player for the fact that he hits, but for the way he hits, or perhaps more specifically, the circumstances under which some of the hits occurred. On the other hand, for all we know, he went around telling people to vote for him, or maybe NFL players are really just as credulous of hype as the next guy.
He absolutely destroyed a punt returner before the ball got there. Halo, shit, there wasn’t even a moat! That’s where that comes from.
It is exactly the way and under which circumstances by which Ward garners these “awards”. It matters not that the hits are legal. It’s that they are taken advantage of in the first place. It’s the context. Ward looks to “take out” opposing players in such a way that retribution is well nigh impossible, nor can it be argued, because again, it’s “legal”. He seeks defenders that are either out of or away from the play enough to where he can blindside them. Boo-hoo, only 200lbs. Well, 200lbs can hit like a Mack truck when you aren’t expecting it, right? I know, they all need their “heads on a swivel”.
He’s a cheap shot artist all right. Only Steelers fans will defend him as a “tough, hard-nosed player that really brings back the dirty uniform”. Well, them and maybe John Madden’s senile old ass.
We shut his lame ass down last time and got him called on his bullshit illegal downfield blocking before, we’ll do it again. There’s nothing worse than that guy. If he were an offensive lineman, he’d be Kevin Gogan.
First, as others have noted, the “winner” of this poll may not have received all that many votes. There are over 1500 players in the NFL. If EVERY one of them votesd in this poll (and they didn’t), the “winner” might have only a few dozen votes. That’s not to say Hines Ward DOESN’T play dirty, just that there’s probably no real consensus that he’s THE dirtiest.
Second, there are all kinds of factors that go into a vote like this. For instance, John Stockton was regularly voted as dirtiest player in the NBA. Was that fair or accurate? Yes and no. He DEFINITELY threw elbows and grabbed jerseys in every game, just as all guards do. But was he THAT much dirtier than his peers? I don’t think so. I think that his colleagues often found HIS conduct particularly galling because he had such a squeaky-clean, wholesome image off the court. Guys he’d been elbowing, mugging and banging around probably resented his choirboy image, and voted for him in part because of that resentment.
We all know football is a rough game, and that guys are brutalizing each other constantly. If players resent SOME of the instigators more than others, it’s probably not JUST because of cheap shots on the field. Yes, Hines Ward engages in cheap shots- but if other players vote for him as dirtiest, I’m guessing they have OTHER reasons to dislike him.
I agreew ith not reading too much into it to be nohest at least as you get further down the list. Jared Allen? Recieved 9 votes or so…out of 296. Ward, however, recieved over 30 votes, so I think there must be something there.
What is funny is Airman Doors projecting his Steeler biases into some sort of rant about high school, to be honest.
It was an allusion to the fact that the little guy always gets picked on in school by the jocks. Only this little guy fights back now.
So you missed the meaning. It’s not that big of a deal.
In any event, I have yet to see any of these so-called “dirty” plays. The fines that he has drawn didn’t even get flagged during the games. So he’s a hell of a blocker and he doesn’t shy away from hits. I guess that makes him dirty. Of course, he’s got nothing on Rodney Harrison, not to mention former players like Bill Romanowski and Conrad Dobler.
Of course he won (with a whopping 10% of the vote). Who the hell else are all the defensive guys going to vote for? The only reason he’s on the list is because the offensive players had all kinds of options to choose from, and they spread their votes around.
What little guy? You keep going on as if Ward isn’t a big, tough guy that can’t deliver a mind-crushing blindside hit to someone bigger than he is…which he does, and often.