Titans' Defensive Tackle Suspended Five Games

Albert Haynesworth, the Tennessee Titans’ defensive tackle who brutally stomped and then kicked Dallas Cowboys center Andre Gurode in the head during yesterday’s game has been suspended for five games without pay.

AP notes that this is the longest suspension for on-field behavior in NFL history, and that sounds appropriate to me–although I would have been tempted to disqualify him for the rest of the season. That was one of the worst cheap shots I’ve seen in the NFL: Haynesworth’s first kick knocked the helmet off Gurode, leaving him totally defenseless for his second hit, which required stitches above his forehead and beneath his eye. As several sportscasters remarked yesterday, the game was played on a natural grass surface, and Haynesworth was wearing shoes with sharp metal cleats, not the low, blunt plastic cleats worn for Astroturf games. (Gurode returned to the sidelines, where he watched the rest of the game wearing an enormous bandage.)