NEWSLETTER
If you haven’t seen Azeez Al-Shaair’s hit on Trevor Lawrence yesterday, I’m guessing you’ve just been completely off the grid for the past 24 hours. Al-Shaair laid a completely dirty and necessary hit on the Jaguars quarterback, and it took him out of the game. Luckily, Lawrence posted on X that he’s feeling alright, so it appears he avoided serious injury. But still, a shot like this to the head has no place in the game.
Here’s the hit if you haven’t seen it. Lawrence and the Jags were on the move, and as Jacksonville’s signal caller gave himself up and was sliding, Al-Shaair decided to go for a kill shot to the head. Again, it appears Lawrence for now has avoided serious injury, but hits don’t get much more dangerous than this.
If that name seemed familiar to Bears fans for being associated with a dirty play, that wouldn’t come as much of a surprise. In Week 2 of this season when the Bears visited the Texans on Sunday Night Football, Al-Shaair laid a huge hit on Caleb Williams along the sideline. While the hit wasn’t technically late or illegal, Williams was very clearly headed out of bounds and Al-Shaair took it upon himself to lay out the rookie QB.
Illegal? No. Questionable? Yes. The very dirty part of the play, however, came in the scrum after the big hit. The hit was made along the Bears’ sideline, and several members of the team came to the aid of their quarterback after the big hit. That’s when Al-Shaair decided to throw a punch at Roschon Johnson which somehow got missed.
Azeez Al-Shaair Suspension Likely Coming
After the hit on Lawrence, it’s pretty fair to assume a suspension is coming. It’s now just likely a matter of how long that suspension will be. While the incident above against the Bears wasn’t penalized (or obviously nearly as bad or dangerous as the Lawrence hit), it will likely be used as an example of having a history of questionable on-field decisions.
I would assume we’ll hear about a suspension at some point soon, but either way with multiple examples of questionable hits this season, I would think we won’t see Al-Shaair for a couple of weeks. He has since apologized publically for the hit.
