Late in the Thursday Night Football game in Cleveland, Myle Garrett put a late hit on Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph. Rudolph took exception to it, and a pretty horrific sight ensued.
Garrett would grab Rudolph’s facemask while Rudolph was on the ground, rip his helmet off his head, and slam the helmet across the top of Rudolph’s head. Take a look:
Obviously swinging a helmet at an unprotected player is a considerably dangerous thing to do. Rudolph was lucky to not receive serious injury from it.
The NFL acted swiftly to punish Garrett and others for their parts in the fight. Garrett was suspended indefinitely, which is to include at least the rest of this season and the playoffs, with him needing to seek permission from the commissioner to be reinstated.
The thing is, for there to be a rule such as this, someone had to have been the first to do it. And it may not surprise you, that player was former Raiders defensive end, Lyle Alzado. The rule was named after him.
Her,e former Raiders linebacker Matt Millen remembers the moment Alzado committed the foul that led to the rule. Though in this case, it was throwing the helmet as a projectile, not swinging it as a weapon as Garrett did. But the NFL made sure they used this opportunity to cover all possible uses of the helmet as a weapon.
