Broncos cornerback Aqib Talib faces a one-game suspension for a one-fingered eye poke of Colts tight end Dwayne Allen. After the sanction was announced, Talib admitted that he deserved to be punished -- just that he didn’t deserve to sit out a full game.
“I mean they’re entitled to discipline me,” Talib told reporters on Monday. “I think I deserve discipline. I didn’t [intentionally] poke him in his eye, but as you can see, I did get his eye. It was unintentional. They’ve got the right to discipline me, as they did.”
They just don’t have the right to discipline Talib in the specific way they did, according to Talib.
“I’ll appeal and try to get it a little bit more reasonable, just for the simple fact that it was not intentional,” Talib said. “I didn’t walk over there like, ‘I’m going to poke this guy in his eye.’ I know I shouldn’t have gone over there in the first place. I should have never gone over there and gotten involved in the situation. I did expect discipline.”
Talib said that coach Gary Kubiak talked to Talib about the move.
“He just told me that I’ve got to be smarter than that,” Talib said. “He was telling me everything that I already knew. I know that I’ve got to be smarter than that. [I have] got to make better decisions, especially in that time of the game. We have full confidence that if we stop them on that third down with the two minutes [remaining], Peyton [Manning] will come down, score a touchdown and get that 187th win in dramatic fashion. I cost us the opportunity to go down and get those points. That’s kind of what we talked about on that plane.”
Talib’s absence, if the suspension sticks, could keep Peyton from getting “that 187th win” for another week, with the Chiefs coming to town on a two-game winning streak and a last-ditch effort to get back into the AFC West race.
