Jason Babin was fined $15,000 for a hit in the neck area on San Francisco quarterback Alex Smith.
He posted a tweet saying that if the NFL wanted to protect quarterbacks so much, they should “get better linemen.”
Later, he told reporters that he was just being sarcastic. Still, he wouldn’t back down totally from his comment, adding that there needed to be a better system for determining how fines are doled out.
“Oh, I’ll call that one 15 [thousand dollars], I’ll call that 40,” Babin said. “There’s no blueprint, there’s no grid system to say, ‘OK, this is how it works, let’s plug it in.’”
Babin, who leads the league with seven sacks this season, said he plans to appeal the fine.
“I got a little upset, because if you were to take guys who played five years ago, 10 years ago and say, ‘Do you think these are fineable offenses?’ They’d be like, ‘No, they should get bonuses,’” said Babin.
Babin, who signed a $28 million deal with the Eagles in the offseason, also feels like he gets singled out for his aggressive style and was fined several times last season.
“I don’t think they like the way I play at all,” Babin said. “They get nervous every time. They know I’m throwin’, and somebody [could] get hurt. That’s what got me paid, that’s what got me to where I am today.”
