The Buffalo Bills faced off against the Cleveland Browns for their Week 2 preseason game on Friday, and after the matchup Jarvis Landry came under fire for a block that he laid on rookie Taron Williams.
Williams’ Bills teammates felt that Landry was unnecessarily rough when going after the defender and that he should have been called for a penalty. Take a look.
#Bills Taron Johnson gets blown up by Jarvis Landry. We’ve unfortunately seen that style crack back block from him before. pic.twitter.com/eg3zmtOJSd
— Greg Vorse (@GregVorse) August 17, 2018
Multiple Bills players spoke out on this matter, including veteran defender and NFL Players Association executive committee member Lorenzo Alexander.
“Landry, he’s a good receiver, physical guy, but some of those plays that he has — Aaron Williams, Taron, I’m pretty sure he has other ones — I just think they’re dirty. Coming from the outside of the box in, the league needs to do a better job of calling penalties on those types of plays. Obviously, defenders get called all the time on stuff that’s probably less egregious than that. If we’re going to protect our football players, we need to protect everybody, not just offensive guys. It was dirty at the end of the day, and that’s how I feel about it.”
Landry also drew criticism from safety Micah Hyde.
“That’s ridiculous. Because if a defensive player does that to an offensive player, he’s getting ejected. I don’t care if he lowered his shoulder or not. He’s coming all the way from No. 1, past the numbers and flying down onto the hashes and cleaning up somebody. That’s the same as that play that Aaron Williams got hit on a couple years back and basically ruined his career. To me, that’s B.S. You can’t do that. All you have to do is get into position, screen him off. He doesn’t have to come in and try to kill anybody.”
Both Alexander and Hyde referenced a hit that Landry laid on Bills safety Aaron Williams two years ago.
I think Jarvis Landry just rebroke Aaron Williams' neck 😱#BUFvsMIA pic.twitter.com/L7KHN16TmB
— One Take At A Time (@OneTakeAtATime) October 23, 2016
That was the last play Aaron Williams ever played. Landry obviously hasn’t learned his lesson. He’s just lucky he didn’t end Taron William’s career before it even started.
