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No one wants to see any player take a vicious hit like the one that knocked Trevor Lawrence out of the game.
It’s easy to agree on that point. Eliminating violent shots is the hard part.
The NFL has instituted several rules to protect quarterbacks but football is a physical sport and players have to react instantly and make split-second decisions going at high speeds so injuries keep occurring.
Lawrence was carted off the field in the first half of Jacksonville’s 23-20 loss to Houston on Sunday after Azeez Al-Shaair leveled the defenseless quarterback with a forearm to the facemask.
The late hit put Lawrence in the fencing position — both fists clenched — and he stayed on the ground for several minutes, while a brawl ensued. Lawrence didn’t require hospitalization for his concussion but it’s unknown when he’ll return.
“Thank you to everyone who has reached out/been praying for me,” Lawrence wrote on X. “I’m home and feeling better. Means a lot, thank you all.”
Al-Shaair was ejected from the game and faces a fine and potential suspension after his latest unsportsmanlike penalty. The Texans' linebacker was flagged and later fined $11,255 for a late hit out of bounds on Titans running back Tony Pollard last week.
He was fined earlier this year after he punched Bears running back Roschon Johnson on the sideline in Week 2. That occurred during a scuffle that started after his hard shot on quarterback Caleb Williams near the sideline that wasn’t flagged.
Al-Shaair once got away with grabbing Tom Brady by the throat on a pass rush in a game between the 49ers and Buccaneers.
Outraged Jaguars players called Al-Shaair’s hit “dirty” and Texans coach DeMeco Ryans made it known he didn’t condone it.
“It’s not what we’re coaching,” Ryans said. “Want to be smart in everything we do and not hurt the team, get a penalty there. Have to be smarter when the quarterback is going down. Unfortunate play. Not representative of who Azeez is. He’s a smart player, really great leader for us. We felt his presence not being there. His loss really affected us on the defensive side. Just not what we’re coaching. Didn’t want to see the melee and all the aftermath. That’s not what we’re about. Not representative of us. I’ll talk to Azeez, address him personally, and we’ll move forward from it.”
Fox Sports color analyst Daryl Johnston, a former fullback for the Dallas Cowboys, didn’t hold back his criticism, calling it a “cheap shot.”
“It’s everything you’re not supposed to do,” Johnston said. “Everything. You’ll see this in slow motion and Azeez Al-Shaair does everything you’re trying to prevent in this situation. It’s reckless. It’s disrespectful. There’s an honor that you give to your opponent on the football field and you respect him. And there’s opportunities to be physical and give big hits and play this game in that manner. And there’s other times when there’s a respect that you grant to your opponent.”
Some former NFL quarterbacks blasted Al-Shaair on social media.
“There is no place in the game of football for dirty hits like this one,” Robert Griffin III wrote on X.
Chase Daniel called it “one of the dirtiest hits” he’s ever seen on a quarterback.
Even defensive players struggled to defend Al-Shaair.
“That was uncalled for,” Hall of Fame defensive lineman Michael Strahan said on Fox’s studio show while fellow Hall of Famer Howie Long agreed.
But the play also sparked debate about the quarterback slide. Lawrence slid feet first, which signals that he’s giving himself up on the play.
The NFL rulebook states: “A defender must pull up when a runner begins a feet-first slide.”
But defensive players aren’t automatically penalized if they make contact with a sliding quarterback if they already committed and the contact is unavoidable.
The rules state it’s a foul when “the defender makes forcible contact into the head or neck area of the runner with the helmet, shoulder, or forearm, or commits some other act that is unnecessary roughness.”
Al-Shaair did that so he was penalized and will face other repercussions.
Still, given the hard-hitting nature of the sport, it won’t be the last time this happens.
AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl
Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence (16) leaves the field on a cart after getting injured on a late hit by Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair during the first half of an NFL football game Sunday, Dec. 1, 2024, in Jacksonville, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
Jacksonville Jaguars tight end Evan Engram (17, right) jumps on Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair (0) after his late hit on quarterback Trevor Lawrence (16) during the first half of an NFL football game Sunday, Dec. 1, 2024, in Jacksonville, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)
Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence (16) slides in front of Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair (0) during the first half of an NFL football game Sunday, Dec. 1, 2024, in Jacksonville, Fla. Lawrence was injured on the play. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — A white Kansas police detective accused of sexually assaulting Black women and girls and terrorizing those who tried to fight back is about to go on federal trial, part of a tangle of cases tied to decades of alleged abuse.
Prosecutors say female residents of poor neighborhoods in Kansas City, Kansas, feared that if they crossed paths with Roger Golubski, he'd demand sexual favors and threaten to harm or jail their relatives. He is charged with six felony counts of violating women's civil rights, and jury selection in his trial is set to begin Monday in a federal courthouse in Topeka.
The case has outraged the community and deepened the historical distrust of law enforcement, often seen as being more heavy-handed in predominately Black neighborhoods. The prosecution follows earlier reports of similar abuse allegations across the country where hundreds of officers have lost their badges after allegations of sexual assaults.
Golubski, now 71, is accused of sexually assaulting one woman starting when she was barely a teenager and another after her sons were arrested. If a jury convicts him, he could die in prison.
The trial is the latest in a string of lawsuits and criminal allegations that has led the county prosecutor’s office to begin a $1.7 million effort to reexamine cases Golubski worked on during his 35 years on the force. One double murder case Golubski investigated already has resulted in an exoneration, and an organization run by rapper Jay-Z is suing to obtain police records.
Golubski has pleaded not guilty, and his attorney has said that lawsuits over the allegations are an “inspiration for fabrication” by his accusers. But prosecutors said that, along with the two women whose accounts are the heart of the criminal case, seven others will testify that Golubski abused or harassed them.
“Every time I turn around, I’m looking," said Jermeka Hobbs, who has filed a separate lawsuit against Golubski and is not a witness in the trial. Her lawsuit says she was groomed to be one of “Golubski’s girls” and submitted to sexual advances fearing that he would bust her for drugs. “I’m thinking somebody is after me. I have no peace at all."
Fellow officers once revered Golubski for his ability to clear cases, and he rose to the rank of captain in Kansas City, Kansas, before retiring there in 2010 and then working on a suburban police force for six more years. His former partner served a stint as police chief.
Golubski now looks nothing like the influential officer he was. He is under house arrest and undergoing kidney dialysis treatments three times a week. That will limit his trial to Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
His attorney, Chris Joseph, said in a statement that some of the allegations against Golubski are 20 to 30 years old, adding, “In public filings, the prosecution has acknowledged that the verdict will turn entirely on the accusers’ credibility.”
But Jim McCloskey, founder of Centurion, a New Jersey nonprofit working to free innocent people, described Golubski in a court hearing as the “dirtiest cop I’ve ever encountered.”
Stories about Golubski remained just whispers in the neighborhoods near Kansas City's former cattle stockyards partly because of the extreme poverty of a place where some homes are boarded up. One neighborhood where Golubski worked is part of Kansas' second-poorest zip code.
Crime was abundant there, as were drug dealers and prostitutes, said Max Seifert, a former Kansas City, Kansas, police officer who graduated from the police academy with Golubski in 1975.
Seifert said police misconduct was tolerated in the department. He described how informants and Golubski’s ex-wife complained that Golubski was soliciting prostitutes. Golubski also was caught having sex with a woman in his office, he said.
“It’s kind of like a boys will be boys type thing,” said Seifert, who was forced into early retirement for refusing to conceal a motorist’s beating by a federal agent in 2003.
McCloskey said in an interview that Golubski had women "at his mercy.”
The inquiry into Golubski stems from the case of Lamonte McIntyre, who started writing to McCloskey’s nonprofit nearly two decades ago.
McIntyre was just 17 in 1994 when he was arrested and charged in connection with a double homicide, within hours of the crimes. He had an alibi; no physical evidence linked him to the killings; and an eyewitness believed the killer was an underling of a local drug dealer. Golubski and the dealer have since been charged in a separate federal case of running a violent sex trafficking operation.
The eyewitness only testified that McIntyre was the killer after Golubski and a now disbarred attorney threatened to take her children away, she alleged in a lawsuit.
McIntyre's mother said in a 2014 affidavit that she wonders whether her refusal to grant regular sexual favors to Golubski prompted him to retaliate against her son.
“She, like many people in the community, just viewed the police as all-powerful,” said Cheryl Pilate, an attorney who helped free McIntyre in 2017.
In 2022, the local government agreed to pay $12.5 million to McIntyre and his mother to settle a lawsuit after a deposition in which Golubski invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent 555 times. The state also paid McIntyre $1.5 million.
“That was the thread that gave people some courage,” said Lindsay Runnels, who serves on the board of the Midwest Innocence Project.
Prosecutors say Golubski drove one of the women at the center of their criminal case to a cemetery and told her to find a spot to dig her own grave. He sexually assaulted her repeatedly, starting when she was just in middle school, leading her to suffer a miscarriage, court filings say.
Once, prosecutors say, he forced her to crawl on the ground with a dog leash around her neck in a remote spot near the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers. With no one around, he is accused of chanting, “Down by the river, said a hank a pank; Where they won’t find her until she stank."
Golubski introduced himself to Ophelia Williams, the other woman at the center of the case, by complimenting her legs and nightgown as police searched her home, prosecutors said.
Williams was terrified at the time because her 14-year-old twins had just been arrested in a double homicide. They ultimately admitted to the crime so police would free their 13-year-old brother, Williams said in a separate lawsuit.
Golubski began sexually assaulting her, alternating between threatening her and claiming he could help her sons, according to court records in the criminal case. The twins are now 40 and remain behind bars. The lawsuit she is part of questions their confessions.
The Associated Press generally does not name alleged victims of sexual assault, but Williams has told her story publicly.
Williams said in her lawsuit that she once mentioned making a complaint. She claims Golubski told her: “Report me to who, the police? I am the police."
Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas.
FILE - Former Kansas City, Kansas, police detective Roger Golubski testifies, Oct. 24, 2022, at the Wyandotte County courthouse in Kansas City, Kan. (Emily Curiel/The Kansas City Star via AP)
