Bears safety Tashaun Gipson and Bengals safety Vonn Bell were fined $10,300 each for taunting in separate incidents during their Week 2 game at Soldier Field, a source said.
Gipson was flagged for clapping at wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase after the Bears stopped the Bengals on third-and-five with 6:26 left in the first quarter. His 15-yard penalty gave Cincinnati a new set of downs.
“I wasn’t really saying much; I just clapped, man,” Gipson said after the game. “It was a huge play on third down. Pumping up my guys... I don’t want to be out there if I can’t be happy for my guys when they make big plays. That’s what this game is about. It’s just adrenaline.
“It was costly and that was something I just can’t do. I apologized... But that rule, it’s a fine line right now. You don’t know if you can be happy, you don’t know if you can — I don’t want to go into detail about it. But anytime my guys make a play, I’m gonna be the first one to congratulate them and be happy, and it’s adrenaline.”
Minutes later, Bell kept talking to Bears quarterback Andy Dalton after a play, and Dalton lobbied the ref to flag him. It worked. Instead of third-and-12 backed up against their own end zone, the Bears got first-and-10 at the 20.
The other penalty of interest from that game was Bears outside linebacker Robert Quinn’s apparently incidental contact with Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow as the two ran out of bounds in the third quarter. They hit shoulders from the side, and Burrow went down surprisingly hard. Quinn was not fined for that play, a source said.
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