Vikings long snapper Cullen Loeffler suffered a season-ending back injury when Falcons receiver Kerry Meier blindsided him with a block on Sunday. Now Meier is paying for the hit, too.
The NFL fined Meier $20,000, reasoning that Meier’s hit was an “illegal blindside block to an opponent’s head area,” Jason La Canfora of NFL Network reports.
On the play in question (video here) Loeffler was running down the field to cover a punt when Meier drilled him. Loeffler never saw it coming.
Vikings punter Chris Kluwe went off on Meier on Twitter about the incident.
“To the Falcon that cheapshotted Loeffler - I hope someone does the same s--t to you and knocks you out for the rest of the year too. A--hole,” Kluwe wrote. “Just watched the film and Cullen was ten yards behind the play; there was no call to do something like that. F--king douchepickle. . . . Imagine if a hit like that happened to Brady or Rogers. They’d be talking about banning the guy for life. On a snapper?”
As it turned out, on a snapper the punishment was a $20,000 fine. Which likely isn’t much consolation to Loeffler, the guy who had his season ended.
