The Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers will square off on “Sunday Night Football” in Week 8, and superstar Micah Parsons‘ spirits should be high given the circumstances.
Not only is the edge rusher coming off perhaps the best game of his NFL tenure — in which he tallied five quarterback hits, four tackles for loss and a career-high three sacks — but he also avoided a financial penalty from the league for an illegal tackle he made against the Arizona Cardinals in that contest.
“Packers DE Micah Parsons wasn’t fined for his hip drop tackle on Jacoby Brissett last week, but LB Quay Walker was fined $17,389 for hitting Brissett in the head on his roughing the passer penalty in the first quarter,” Zach Kruse of The Packers Wire posted to X Sunday morning.
The typical fine for a hip drop tackle is exactly the amount that the league levied against Walker. The NFL hit Carolina Panthers outside linebacker D.J. Wonnum with a fine of $17,389 for a hip drop tackle he made during the second quarter of his team’s Week 7 game against the New York Jets, characterizing the play as “unnecessary roughness.”
Precisely why the league chose not to fine Parsons is unclear, as referees did throw a flag on the play in real time.
“Entering Week 7, there had been nine hip-drop tackles where players were fined [but] no penalties called,” Howard Balzer of CardsWire wrote on social media. “However, Packers DE Micah Parsons was penalized for one last Sunday against the Cardinals, but there was no fine.
Packers Favored to Beat Steelers, Hold on to Lead in NFC
GettyGreen Bay Packers edge rusher Micah Parsons.
Whatever the league’s reasoning was, Parsons will head to Pittsburgh with his pocketbook in tact.
Green Bay (4-1-1) will attempt to hold onto its thin lead over six NFC teams, all with records of 5-2. The Packers’ tie against the Dallas Cowboys and the bye week Green Bay has already gone through have resulted in the team leading the conference based on a .750 winning percentage compared to a .714 mark for all the 5-2 squads.
The Packers opened as 3.5-point road favorites over the Steelers, though that line had dipped to 2.5 points as of Sunday morning, per ESPN BET.
Micah Parsons Will Square Off Against Former Packers QB Aaron Rodgers on ‘Sunday Night Football’
GettyPittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
The biggest storyline heading into Sunday night will be Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers squaring off against his old team, for which he played 18 years, won four MVP awards and claimed a Super Bowl ring.
Rodgers made clear on Wednesday that he doesn’t view the matchup as an opportunity for revenge.
“I don’t have any animosity toward the organization,” Rodgers said, per Brook Pryor of ESPN. “Obviously, I wish that things had been better in our last year there, but I have a great relationship with a lot of people still in that organization, and this is not a revenge game for me. I’m just excited to see some of those guys and be on ‘Sunday Night Football’ again.”
Rodgers addressed the circumstances again later in the week.
“Damn near everything great in my life is because of my football career, and my football career started, and will end one day, with Green Bay,” Rodgers said. “So we got a lot of love for all of those memories and a lot of great friends that I still carry with me to this day.”
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