NFL Players Got Creative With Tackling this Week

Yesterday provided one of the better Sunday Night Football showcases in a long minute—the Patriots broke the Chiefs' perfect start to the season, and capped off a strange day across the league when Tom Brady scored a rushing touchdown. Earlier in the day, the Bears and Dolphins provided a nail biting overtime, and Kirk Cousins danced in a way that would make teenage sons and daughters everywhere embarrassed. But the dad-dancing and and dad-running weren't the only unorthodox things going down on the field yesterday. Something was in the air that made the day ripe for weird-ass tackles.

First up: Houston Texans linebacker Jadaveon Clowney.

This is mean coming from anyone, but Clowney has his own dreads and should certainly know better than this. You could try to paint this one as a mistake, but it's not like your jersey has thick ropes hanging off of it. Clowney knew what he was gripping. By whatever means possible, apparently, though, because the Texans beat out the Bills 20-13 at home.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the gulf, the Miami Dolphins put up a huge win yesterday against the Chicago Bears. A 75-yard touchdown in the final minutes of regulation forced a nail-biting overtime, which saw a series of maddening plays, including two turnovers, a pass caught off a helmet deflection, and a missed field goal that would have given the Bears the win. The Dolphins eventually snuck away with a 31-28 victory off a field goal.

But just to show you the stakes of the game, Leonard Floyd decided to go full Road Dogg on Danny Amendola:

Floyd's play wasn't all that different from a play on Monday Night Football a few years ago when a Detroit Lions defender body-slammed then-rookie Ezekiel Elliot. Like Floyd's play, it too drew an unnecessary roughness penalty because, you know, you're not supposed to suplex dudes in football. The hair pulling, though, that's totally legal and players assume that risk when they wear their hair long. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be some kind of gentleman's code between players to avoid it, though, because that shit's just rude.