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NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- When Michael Griffin saw fellow NFL safety Brandon Meriweather's two-game suspension, he took note. Griffin served a one-game suspension last year for a hit the league judged to be a rules violation, and the Tennessee Titans safety knows he will draw a suspension like Meriweather’s if he draws the league’s attention again. Such a suspension would cost him two game checks, which he figured would be half a million dollars. The Tennessean’s Jim Wyatt ran the numbers and reports it would actually be $729,412. Like most defenders who draw an extra look over hits because they are viewed as repeat offenders, Griffin is confused and feels he’s in a no-win situation. He’s hitting a moving target in a spilt second, and if that moving target’s head winds up in a different place than Griffin expected, he can’t change course that late. “Last year when I went through the appeal process and when I went to the competition committee, I asked them, ‘What do you do to avoid these situations?’” Griffin said. “One answer I got was, ‘Sometimes you have to look at the situation and just make the judgment that there is no way to make a clean play, so you have to allow somebody to catch the ball.' “My question to them was, ‘What do you tell your coach?’ Because if you do that, you’re second guessing yourself every time you go in [for a hit]. ‘Is this going to be clean? Is this not going to be clean?’ When it gets to that point, either you’ve got to make the play and take that risk or if you don’t make the play, they are going to find somebody else to make the play.” I’m sympathetic. Griffin is weighing the threat of a suspension that would cost him $729,412 versus the threat of failing to make plays and losing a job that current includes base salaries that add up to $19 million over the next three years. He’s got to avoid headshots, but sometimes things happen. The idea that sometimes there is no safe play and a defender has to allow a catch to be made is counterintuitive to a football player. If he tries to do the right thing, if his intent is a clean tackle, I don’t know what else the league can reasonably expect.
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